THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 
OF  CALIFORNIA 


ifimurawri 


RIVAL   FRENCH   COURTS 


TO 
ANABEL   DOUGLAS 

J^e  charme  est  d  F  esprit  ce  que  la  grdce  est  au  corps 


HENRI   JULES   DE   ROURBON, 
PRINCE  DK  COND£. 


Fron  tispiece. 


RIVAL 
FRENCH   COURTS 

THE  EXPERIENCES  OF  A  LADY-IN-WAITING 

AT   SCEAUX,   AT  VERSAILLES,   AND 

IN  THE  BASTILLE 

BY   S.    H.    LOMBARDINI 


WITH  PORTRAITS 


NEW  YORK 

THE  MACMILLAN  CO. 
1913 


DC  i  ss 


INTRODUCTION 

THE  heroine  of  the  following  pages  was  without 
wealth,  without  position,  without  influence,  at 
least  as  these  are  counted  in  the  circles  in  which 
she  moved  ;  she  could  not  bestow  great  favours 
upon  her  friends,  nor  awaken  even  small  fears 
in  the  heart  of  her  enemies.  Yet  her  Memoirs, 
when  they  appeared  a  few  years  after  her  death, 
were  greeted  with  an  eagerness,  read  with  a 
glow  of  interest  which  few  writings  have  called 
forth. 

Madame  de  Sevigne,  the  Due  de  Saint-Simon, 
whose  eyes  had  seen  more  and  that  more  clearly 
than  is  given  to  most  mortals  to  see,  were  never 
read,  as  authors,  by  their  contemporaries.  Nearly 
forty  years  elapsed  after  Madame  de  Sevigne's 
death  before  her  letters,  Memoirs  in  matter  if 
not  in  form,  were  published  and  circulated  ;  more 
than  a  hundred  years  had  heaped  their  dust 
upon  Saint-Simon's  ruthless  portraits  before  they 
were  revealed  to  the  public ;  but  scarcely  three 
years  had  passed  after  Madame  de  Staal's  death, 

before    Paris    began    to    turn    over    eagerly    the 

v  a  2 


782 


vi  INTRODUCTION 

leaves   of  her  newly  published   Memoirs.     They 
were  in  all  hands,  her  name  was  on  all  lips.  .  .  . 

"Yes,  all  the  women  think  so,  but  all  the 
men  do  not  ..."  said  Troublet,  sweeping  all 
Paris  into  his  answer  to  an  ill-natured  remark 
upon  the  topic  of  the  hour.  The  remark  had 
come  from  Fontenelle  ;  he  was  then  close  upon 
his  hundredth  year,  and  his  soul  had  dried  within 
him.  "  I  am  sorry  for  her,"  he  had  said  of 
Madame  de  Staal,  whom  he  had  counted 
among  his  friends,  "this  is  written  with  agree- 
able elegance,  but  it  was  not  worth  writing 
at  all." 

Posterity  has  not  sided  with  Fontenelle ;  over 
and  over  again,  from  women  whom  time  and 
distance  have  rendered  impartial,  as  well  as  from 
men  endowed  by  heaven  with  natural  fairness, 
we  hear  these  spontaneous  expressions  of  delight 
which  a  truly  human  document  cannot  fail  to 
call  forth.  Madame  de  Staal  has  a  sense  of 
humour  deliciously  companionable,  a  charming 
directness  most  unique  in  that  time  of  meander- 
ing periphrases,  a  philosophy  so  true  and  so  dis- 
cerning that  it  holds  and  fascinates. 

"It  seems  to  me,"  says  Sainte-Beuve,  "that 
the  Memoirs  of  Madame  de  Staal  should  be 
re-read  at  the  beginning  of  each  winter,  at  the 
end  of  autumn,  beneath  the  November  trees  to 
the  sound  of  the  falling  foliage." 


INTRODUCTION  vii 

Yes,  a  certain  note  of  sadness  runs  all  through 
these  Memoirs,  and  yet  they  read  like  a  fairy 
tale — but  a  fairy  tale  with  a  human  ending :  joy 
declines  through  its  pages,  as  it  declines  through 
the  human  years,  as  the  sun  declines  through 
the  autumn  to  the  winter.  There  is  a  sudden 
turn  of  the  wheel  of  fate,  and  instead  of  "  living 
happily  ever  after  "  the  heroine  meets  unhappiness 
face  to  face,  and  hears  its  footsteps  dogging  her 
own  for  ever  on  the  unexpected  path  into  which 
she  has  been  forced. 

Her  childhood  and  her  youth  had  been  en- 
compassed with  joy  and  love  and  adulation ;  like 
a  veritable  little  queen  she  had  seen  all  who 
approached  her  acknowledge  her  sway,  forestall 
her  desires,  extoll  her  decisions,  and  she  had 
taken  it  as  a  matter  of  course.  Her  grace,  her 
wit,  her  wisdom  had  been  to  her  like  so  many 
magic  wands — then  the  unexpected  happens,  and 
the  young  queen  wakes  up  one  morning  to  find 
herself  a  waiting  maid !  How  does  she  bear  her- 
self under  such  crushing  conditions  ;  how  does  she 
draw  from  her  very  servitude  the  elements  of  the 
triumph  which  she  is  to  accomplish,  the  greatest 
triumph,  immortality  in  the  minds  of  men  ?  that 
question  stimulates  for  ever  the  imagination,  as  one 
turns  over  the  pages  of  Madame  de  Staal's  Memoirs. 

It  is  true  she  lived  at  a  time  peculiarly  charged 
with  dramatic  possibilities;  the  last  years  of 


viii  INTRODUCTION 

Louis  XlV.'s  reign,  the  first  years  which  followed 
his  death  were  perhaps  more  fraught  with  passion 
than  any  other  time  in  French  history.  The 
fortress  of  absolutism  and  of  tradition  was 
crumbling  down,  the  walls  had  fallen,  and  there 
lay  revealed  to  eager  and  passionate  eyes  avenues 
endless  and  unexplored.  But  fate  had  enclosed 
Madame  de  Staal  Delaunay  within  a  magic  circle 
in  which  all  eyes  were  resolutely  closed  to 
realities.  While  the  rest  of  France  was  coming 
fast  into  its  natural  inheritance;  a  sane  desire  to 
test  the  efficacy  of  thought  by  the  efficacy  of 
deeds,  the  little  court  of  Sceaux,  where  Madame 
de  Staal  lived,  persisted  in  treating  thought  as  a 
futile  plaything,  and  jangled  words  as  a  court 
jester  jangles  his  bells,  for  the  mere  pleasure  of 
hearing  them  tinkle.  Madame  du  Maine,  u  queen 
of  Sceaux "  as  she  liked  to  hear  herself  called, 
masqueraded  through  life,  a  be-ribonned  shep- 
herdess, a  nymph,  a  goddess,  as  fancy  prompted, 
and  forced  into  her  masquerade  all  those  who  came 
into  contact  with  her.  She  also  dragged  them 
with  her  into  a  conspiracy,  which  has  its  place  in 
history,  yet  savours  more  of  a  comedy  than  of  a 
political  undertaking,  dragged  them  incidentally 
into  prison,  and  having  herself  emerged  from  a 
"  cruel "  captivity  without  having  learned  anything 
therefrom  about  the  realities  of  life,  she  went 
back  unchanged  to  her  absurdities. 


INTRODUCTION  ix 

For  fully  twenty-five  years  longer  she  afforded 
the  France  of  Voltaire  and  of  the  Encyclopaedists 
the  astonishing  spectacle  of  a  topsy-turvydom, 
where  all  played  at  being  something  which 
they  were  not,  and  strove  night  and  day  to 
outdo  one  another  in  futilities.  Madame  du 
Maine  did  it  from  choice,  and  her  courtiers 
were  hypnotised  into  it  with  or  without  their 
consent.  As  a  representative  of  the  "  divine " 
right  of  the  greater  to  impose  their  whims  upon 
the  smaller,  Madame  du  Maine  is  indeed 
unsurpassed. 

"  If  you  wish,"  says  Sainte-Beuve,  "to  study  in 
a  perfect  specimen,  and  as  if  under  the  microscope, 
the  dainty  egotism  the  fantastic  and  coquettish 
despotism  of  a  princess  of  the  blood  in  the  olden 
time,  and  the  artless  impossibility  in  which  she 
lived  of  conceiving  any  other  existence  in  the 
world  than  her  own,  go  to  Sceaux,  there  you 
will  see  these  gross  defects  in  miniature,  just 
as  we  see  gold-fish  moving  in  the  sunshine  in 
a  transparent  bowl." 

It  is  that  "  transparent  bowl "  which  Madame 
de  Staal  Delaunay  holds  up  to  our  eyes,  and 
upon  it  she  brings  to  play  most  skilfully  the 
light  of  her  humorous  wisdom  and  philosophy. 
She  lived  in  the  atmosphere  of  Sceaux,  yet  was 
not  of  it ;  though  she  breathed  it  day  after 
day,  its  narcotic  properties  could  not  dull  her 


x  INTRODUCTION 

clear  vision  nor  drug  her  independent  spirit. 
She  is  that  rare  exception  among  exceptions : 
an  insider  capable  of  taking  an  outsider's  point 
of  view.  She  has  been  much  read,  much  dis- 
cussed —  the  details  of  her  life  not  mentioned 
in  her  Memoirs  have  been  supplied  by  enthusi- 
astic biographers.  One  rather  unaccountable 
error  seems  to  have  slipped  into  most  of  these 
biographies ;  started  by  one,  repeated  by  the 
others,  it  gave  rise  to  a  good  deal  of  controversy : 
the  date  of  Mademoiselle  Delaunay's  birth  has  been 
stated  over  and  over  again  as  1693,  and  accord- 
ing to  that  she  would  have  been  barely  eighteen 
when  she  entered  Madame  du  Maine's  service — 
What !  said  sceptic  readers,  a  girl  of  eighteen, 
inexperienced,  impressionable,  delicately  nurtured 
is  suddenly  called  to  fight  life  at  most  cruel 
odds  and  bears  no  apparent  marks  of  its  blows ! 
The  "indelible  mark  of  the  waiting-maid,"  as 
she  herself  calls  it,  is  stamped  so  early  upon  her 
character,  yet  her  dignity  rises  above  it  as  a  tall 
lily  rises  undefiled  above  the  swamp  in  which  it 
is  rooted — impossible  !  there  is  some  falsification ! 
— womanlike,  Madame  de  Staal  Delaunay  has 
tampered  with  her  dates !  Upon  closer  inspec- 
tion one  realises,  however,  that  there  has  been 
no  voluntary  error  of  date  in  the  Memoirs. 
Mademoiselle  Delaunay  does  not  state  with  any 
precision  the  year  of  her  birth ;  moreover  the 


INTRODUCTION  xi 

fact  that  certain  historical  events  are  mentioned 
by  her  as  contemporary  with  certain  circumstances 
of  her  life  might  have  prevented  the  initial  error. 
It  is  now  commonly  thought  that  Mademoiselle 
Delaunay  was  not  in  her  nineteenth  but  close 
upon  her  twenty-sixth  year  when  she  entered 
Madame  du  Maine's  service.  She  was  ready  to 
unravel  the  bewildering  complexity  of  elements 
which  were  to  make  up  her  life  at  Sceaux,  and 
although  the  sum  total  of  it  all  was  to  be  sad- 
ness, it  was  also  to  be  fullness  and  richness  of 
experience.  It  was  given  to  her  to  taste  of  the 
bitterness  and  of  the  joy  of  life,  of  its  futility 
and  of  its  fervour ;  to  her  was  given,  moreover, 
that  gift  of  expression  which  is  the  true  liberator 
of  the  soul. 

"  She  saw  true,"  says  Sainte  -  Beuve,  in  the 
charming  chapter  which  he  devotes  to  her,  "  and 
it  was  given  to  her  to  transmit  to  us  what  she  saw. 
If  she  missed  more  than  one  gift  of  fate,  she 
at  least  had  those  of  mind,  language,  and  taste. 
Some  of  her  least  sayings  have  come  into  the 
circulation  of  society  and  have  added  to  the 
riches  of  the  mind  of  France.  More  than  that 
— by  her  noble  conduct  during  a  miserable 
conspiracy,  she  has  won  a  place  in  all  future 
history.  How  many  statesmen  who  think  them- 
selves great  men  and  who  are  striving  all  their 
lives,  do  not  obtain  as  much ! " 


CONTENTS 

CHAP.  PAGE 

I.   AT  THE   CONVENT   OF   SAINT-SATJVEUR    ...  1 

H.   THE  MARQUIS  DE   SILLY         ^ 8 

HE.   KNOCKING  AT  THE  DOOR  OF  FORTUNE             .           .  21 

IV.   THE   DUC  AND   DUCHESSE   DU   MAINE      ...  39 

V.   THE   COURT   OF  SCEAUX  .  .  ...  .53 

VI.   GREAT  TRIALS  AND   SMALL  TRIUMPHS     ...  67 

VH.   SLAVES   OF  PLEASURE   AT   SCEAUX             ...  81 

Vm.   THE   TRAGIC  END   OF  A   LONG  REIGN       ...  91 

IX.   THE   KING'S   WILL 100 

X.   RIVALRIES  AND   CONSPIRACIES          ....  109 

XI.  HUMILIATION   OF  THE  HOUSE   OF  MAINE          .           .  129 

XH.   THE   FIRST  YEARS   OF  THE   REGENCY       .           .           .  154 

Xm.   AT  THE   BASTILLE 159 

XTV.   LOVE  AND  TREACHERY  WITHIN  PRISON  WALLS       .  169 
XV.   RELEASE   OF  THE   SCEAUX  CONSPIRATORS         .           .187 

XVI.   EVENTFUL  YEARS — 1720-1730          ....  197 

XVII.    V ANITAS,   VANITATUM 204 

XVIEI.   MADAME   DU  MAINE  AS  A   MATRIMONIAL  AGENT     .  216 

XIX.   THE   LATER  COURT   OF  SCEAUX       ....  225 

XX.   THE   CLOSE   OF  AN   EVENTFUL  LIFE          .           .           .  242 

INDEX   .  255 


Xlll 


LIST   OF   ILLUSTRATIONS 


HENRI  JULES  DE  BOURBON,  PRINCE  DE  CONDE^  Frontispiece 

MADAME   DE   STAAL-DELAUNAY  .  .  .      To  face  p.     16 


ANNE  LOUISE  DE  COND^,  DUCHESSE^DU   MAINE 
LE  DUO  DU  MAINE  ET  MADAME  DE  MONTESPAN 

MADAME   FILLON \ 

MICHEL,    BARON    OF    THE   COM^DIE   FRANC,  AISEj 

MADEMOISELLE  D'ORL^ANS,  DAUGHTER  OF  THE 
REGENT  PHILIPPE   D'ORL^ANS    . 

PERE   LE   TELUER 

ADELAIDE     DE    SAVOIE,    DUCHESSE    DE    BOUR- 
GOGNE        

DUG   DE  BOURGOGNE 

LOUIS  DE  BOURBON,   COMTE  DE  TOULOUSE       . 
GUILLAUME,   CARDINAL  DUBOIS 

PHILIPPE,  DUG  D'ORL^ANS.     REGENT  :   1715- 
1723 

ARMAND   DU  PLESSIS,   DUC   DE   RICHELIEU 
MADAME   DU   CHATELET    . 


40 
48 

56 

64 
92 

96 

102 
144 

160 
182 

208 


xv 


RIVAL    FRENCH    COURTS 

CHAPTER   I 

AT  THE  CONVENT  OF  SAINT- SAUVEUR 

IN  the  year  1684  an  obscure  French  artist 
named  Cordier  Delaunay  emigrated  to  England,  in 
the  hope  of  finding  there  the  sustenance,  if  not 
the  fame,  which  his  work  had  not  brought  him  in 
France.  His  efforts  did  not  meet  with  success; 
he  was  never  able  to  send  for  the  young  wife 
whom  he  had  left  behind  him  in  Paris,  but  in 
that  same  year,  1684,  his  name  was  rescued 
from  oblivion  through  the  birth  of  his  second 
daughter,  the  future  Madame  de  Staal  Delaunay. 
Her  charming  Memoirs,  in  which  that  most 
modern  element,  the  power  not  to  take  one's 
self  too  seriously,  mixes  so  naturally  with 
eighteenth  -  century  sensibility,  are  among  the 
most  refreshing  documents  of  a  century  famous 
for  picturesque  contrasts. 

The  first  years  of  little  Mademoiselle  Delaunay 
were  spent  at  the  convent  of  Saint  -  Sauveur 
d'Evreux  in  Normandy,  where,  through  the 


2       AT  THE  CONVENT   OF  SAINT-SAUVEUR 

introduction  of  some  influential  friends,  her 
mother  had  been  admitted  as  a  non-paying 
dame  pensionnaire.  The  abbess,  Madame  de 
la  Rochefoucauld,  was  a  sister  of  the  famous 
Due  de  la  Rochefoucauld,  author  of  the 
pessimistic  "  Maximes,"  and  the  fact  that  the 
abbess  was  an  exclusive  lover  of  dogs  may  be 
taken  as  an  indication  that  she  shared  in  some 
measure  her  brother's  misanthropy.  She  had 
made  of  her  apartment  a  home  for  homeless 
dogs.  The  lame,  the  blind,  the  weak,  the  aged 
filled  it  with  whinings  and  with  barkings,  and 
with  deep  canine  sighs  of  contentment  and 
resignation ;  the  place  was  theirs,  and  human 
invaders  were  warned  to  tread  cautiously,  for 
fear  of  infringing  upon  superior  rights. 

The  child,  who  had  found  a  shelter  in  the 
convent  too,  had  lived  there  two  years  with  her 
mother,  and  was  four  years  old  before  her  baby 
helplessness  had  been  allowed  to  come  into  collision 
with  lame  paws  and  battered  tails.  In  consequence 
the  abbess  hardly  knew  her,  at  a  time  when  the 
other  religieuses  were  already  her  devoted  slaves. 
It  happened  then  that  one  day  she  was  asked 
with  her  mother  to  dine  in  Madame  de  la 
Rochefoucauld's  apartment. 

Very  carefully,  with  serious  baby  intensity,  she 
steered  through  the  dangers  against  which  she  had 
been  warned,  when  lo  !  there  was  a  loud  howl,  and 


CHILDHOOD  8 

the  abbess'  face  assumed  an  expression  of  awe- 
inspiring  sternness.  The  little  girl  stopped  short, 
very  much  frightened,  and  some  one  whispered  in 
her  ear  "  II  faut  demander  pardon."  With  childish 
equity,  the  offender  walked  straight  to  the  offended 
— dog  though  he  was  —  and  asked  his  pardon 
in  regretful,  well-chosen  language.  Everybody 
laughed ;  she  was  already  famous  all  through  the 
convent  for  her  wonderful  choice  of  words,  this 
little  four-year  old  pleader,  but  the  abbess  had 
never  noticed  it  before ;  this  time  she  loved  her 
for  it  and  remained  her  friend  from  that  day 
onward. 

The  child  had  need  of  friends  indeed.  Very 
soon  her  mother  had  to  leave  her,  in  order  to  accept 
the  post  of  governess  to  the  Duchesse  de  Venta- 
dour's  daughter,  and  shortly  after  Monsieur  Cordier 
Delaunay  died  in  England.  His  little  daughter 
had  never  seen  him,  and  her  later  comment  on  her 
childish  grief  at  the  news  of  his  death  does  not 
sound  emotional.  "  Je  ne  me  souviens  plus  d'ou 
mes  larmes  partirent,"  she  says  in  her  Memoirs. 

Madame  de  la  Rochefoucauld  proved  a  very 
good  friend  to  the  little  orphan  ;  but  better  friends 
still  were  two  ladies  then  staying  at  the  convent, 
Mesdames  de  Grieu,  whose  affection  seemed  to 
have  amounted  to  extravagant  devotion.  "They 
were  unoccupied,"  as  Madame  de  Staal  Delaunay 
explains  in  her  Memoirs,  analysing  the  situation 


4       AT  THE  CONVENT  OF  SAINT-SAUVEUR 

with  her  customary  balance,  "  and  loved  me  with 
the  vehemence  which  solitude  and  listlessness  are 
apt  to  give  to  all  feelings."  Madame  de  Grieu, 
former  abbess  of  Saint- Jouarre,  and  her  sister  were 
awaiting  in  the  convent  of  Saint  Sauveur  the  issue 
of  the  quarrel  between  Louis  XIV.  and  the  Holy 
See,  concerning  the  right  of  nominating  abbesses 
for  the  "  Urbanist "  convents.  The  quarrel  lasted 
long,  and  when  at  last,  after  five  years,  Madame 
de  Grieu  took  possession  of  the  convent  of  Saint 
Louis  in  Rouen,  she  adopted  the  child  who 
had  filled  with  interest  the  empty  days  of  her 
interregnum. 

At  Saint  Louis,  little  Mademoiselle  Delaunay 
held  absolute  sway :  she  lived  in  the  abbess'  private 
apartments ;  four  nuns,  and  with  them  Madame  de 
Grieu's  unwilling  nieces,  were  bidden  to  wait  upon 
her,  and  a  pension  which  the  abbess  derived  from 
private  sources  was  spent  almost  exclusively  on 
the  child's  education,  entrusted  to  numerous  and 
expensive  tutors.  As  they  passed  in  and  out  of 
the  convent  gates,  these  masters,  who  were  part  of 
the  luxury  lavished  upon  the  abbess'  protegee, 
were  no  doubt  followed  by  many  a  disapproving 
glance  and  gesture  of  the  good  nuns ;  but  they 
must  have  been  immensely  gratified  with  their 
pupil,  who,  at  the  age  of  thirteen,  studied  "  passion- 
ately "  the  philosophy  of  Descartes  and  "  amused  " 
herself  by  anticipating  his  deductions,  in  order  to 


THE   FIRST  LITERARY  SUCCESS  5 

ascertain  whether  she  had  rightly  grasped  his 
meaning ! 

She  soon  had  an  opportunity  of  putting  her 
dialectical  talents  to  a  practical  use,  and  that  in 
the  defence  of  Madame  de  Grieu's  interests  against 
those  of  a  rival  abbess,  nominated  to  Saint  Louis 
by  the  Archbishop  of  Rouen.  Madame  de  Grieu 
was  then  in  a  very  difficult  position :  the  murmurs 
of  the  gossiping  nuns  had  swelled  to  the  pro- 
portions of  a  rebellion,  and  the  abbess  was  accused 
of  spending  the  revenues  of  the  convent  on  her 
nieces  and  her  adopted  daughter. 

There  were  no  grounds  for  this  accusation ;  the 
convent  of  Saint  Louis  was  wretchedly  poor,  and 
even  the  wisest  of  administrations  had  failed  to 
raise  it  to  a  state  of  prosperity,  but  not  one  sou 
of  its  revenues  had  been  put  to  private  or  illegal 
use.  Unable  to  prove  her  integrity,  but  deter- 
mined to  stand  her  ground,  the  abbess  at  last 
proposed  to  give  up  the  temporal  administration 
of  the  convent  and  the  living  which  she  herself 
derived  from  it,  undertaking  to  depend  entirely 
on  her  private  income. 

Many  negotiations  were  necessary  to  arrive  at 
a  satisfactory  agreement,  and  when  this  was  reached 
at  last,  the  legal  advisers  of  the  abbess  were  obliged 
to  own  that  the  most  conclusive  arguments  in  the 
case  had  come  from  the  pen  of  a  girl  of  fourteen — 
little  Mademoiselle  Delaunay.  Her  talents  had, 

A2 


6       AT  THE  CONVENT  OF  SAINT-SAUVEUR 

by  this  time,  won  her  more  than  mere  technical 
admiration.  The  Memoirs  mention  among  others 
a  certain  Monsieur  Brunei  who  besieged  her  with 
love  sonnets,  which,  however,  seem  to  have  made 
very  little  impression  upon  the  recipient,  and  which 
certainly  remained  unanswered.  In  spite  of  rebuffs, 
and  driven  by  an  infatuation  which  thirsted  to 
communicate  itself,  Brunei  introduced  to  her  a 
friend  who  speedily  became  a  rival.  It  was  a 
certain  Abbe  de  Vertot,  an  impecunious  and 
enthusiastic  bookworm,  the  terror  of  all  book- 
sellers, whose  books  he  thumbed  rapturously  from 
morning  till  night,  without  ever  being  able  to  buy 
them.  The  books  now  profited  by  his  being  in 
love ;  but  not  so  the  booksellers,  for  their  ears 
rang  with  the  praises  of  Mademoiselle  Delaunay's 
genius  and  charms,  while  the  books  lay  unheeded 
on  the  counter.  It  may  have  been  during  one  of 
these  rhapsodical  but  one-sided  conversations  that 
the  famous  Monsieur  de  Fontenelle,  staying  at 
Rouen  for  a  few  days,  pushed  open  the  door  of  the 
bookshop,  and,  after  listening  for  a  while  in  his  usual 
deliberate  manner,  decided  that  Madame  de  Grieu's 
young  protegee  must  be  worth  knowing.  At  any 
rate  his  voice  joins  the  chorus  of  her  praises 
about  that  time,  and  no  weightier  admiration 
could  have  been  won  than  that  of  the  feted  author 
of  "La  Pluralite  des  Mondes."  Mademoiselle 
Delaunay  does  not,  however,  seem  to  have  attached 


A  SLACKENING  ESCORT  7 

much  importance  to  the  tribute  of  his  apprecia- 
tion ;  she  was  then  very  interested  in  some  friends 
who  lived  near  the  convent  gates,  and  to  whom  she 
paid  daily  visits,  very  interested  also  in  a  relative 
of  theirs,  a  Monsieur  de  Rey,  who,  after  each  visit, 
never  failed  to  offer  her  his  hand  to  escort  her 
back  to  Saint  Louis.  The  length  and  breadth  of 
a  public  square  lay  between  the  house  in  question 
and  the  convent  gates,  and  as  Monsieur  de  Rey 
and  Mademoiselle  Delaunay  sauntered  through  it 
observant  onlookers  might  have  noticed  that  at 
first  they  skirted  the  outer  edge  of  the  square, 
lengthening  the  road  to  the  utmost.  As  the  days 
went  by,  however,  the  couple  steered  more  and 
more  towards  the  diagonal  crossing  line,  until  at 
last  the  convent  gates  were  reached  with  astonish- 
ing alacrity.  "  Calculate  the  quantitative  difference 
between  a  6  square '  and  a  <  diagonal '  affection" — 
Mademoiselle  Delaunay  set  herself  that  problem 
which  she  had  helped  to  illustrate,  and  shed  no 
tears  over  its  solution! 


CHAPTER   II 

THE  MARQUIS  DE   SILLY 

A  CONVENT,  in  spite  of  its  liberal  attitude  of 
two  hundred  years  ago,  would  hardly  seem  the 
best  possible  school  wherein  to  gain  a  knowledge 
of  love,  but  Mademoiselle  Delaunay's  natural 
understanding  of  its  laws  and  vagaries  developed 
quite  independently  of  her  surroundings, 

Of  the  vague  stirrings  of  her  young  imagina- 
tion before  she  meets  the  man  whom  she  will 
love  passionately  to  the  end,  she  tells  in  a 
charming  tone  of  amused  detachment;  and  here 
and  there,  shining  like  little  crystal  drops  of 
wisdom,  are  reflections  which,  collected  and 
classified,  would  make  an  excellent  "guide  to 
love."  "  The  heart  hardly  ever  fails  to  rebel  against 
any  demands  which  it  could  not  reciprocate"  is 
her  summing  up  of  the  hesitations  and  rejections 
awakened  in  her  by  the  courtship  of  Monsieur 
Brunei.  He  was,  as  she  describes  him 

"a  man  of  exquisite  discernment,  possessed  of 
much  knowledge,  yet  lacking  in  those  graces 

8 


NEW   SOCIAL  INTERESTS  9 

which  are  only  acquired  in  society,  and  which 
please  more  readily  than  do  more  sterling  advan- 
tages. It  interested  me,"  she  owns  a  little  later 
on,  "to  unravel  his  real  thoughts  and  feelings 
about  me,  but  if  he  expressed  them  too  clearly 
and  seemed  to  expect  some  return,  I  felt  a  great 
distaste  for  him." 

The  first  time  she  met  a  man  of  really  polished 
manners,  the  social  instinct -in  her  leapt  up  and 
exulted,  and  she  imagined  that  her  heart  was 
touched.  It  happened  in  an  old  Normandy 
chateau,  very  lonely  and  dull,  where  she  was 
visiting  a  young  convent  friend. 

"  I  had  only  met  there  a  few  country  squires," 
she  says,  "who  had  not  at  all  attracted  my 
attention,  when  the  chevalier  d'Herb  .  .  .  carne 
to  call.  He  was  asked  to  join  in  a  game  of 
cards,  after  which  he  went  away,  promising  to 
return  for  a  longer  visit  a  little  later." 

Meanwhile  Mademoiselle  Delaunay  made  a 
discovery  which  seemed  rather  perturbing  to  her. 

"  I  discovered,"  she  continues,  "  that  I  desired 
his  return ;  I  thought  over  the  reasons  which  I 
could  have  for  that  and  finally  explained  to  myself 
that  he  was  a  witty  man,  a  man  with  social  clever- 
ness whose  company  one  must  naturally  desire  in  a 
place  as  lonely  as  this  was.  Then,  on  examining 
more  closely  upon  what  I  had  based  my  opinion  of 
his  wit,  and  on  trying  to  remember  what  I  had 
heard  him  say,  the  only  words  of  his  which  I  could 


10  THE   MARQUIS  DE  SILLY 

recall  were  'gano,  trois  matadors'  —  and  'sans 
prendre." 

After  that  she  was  perhaps  not  quite  unprepared 
for  the  disillusion  which  was  to  follow,  and  she 
closes  the  episode  by  remarking  quite  cheerfully: 
"When  he  came  back  and  spoke  at  greater 
length,  the  wit  with  which  I  had  endowed  him 
so  gratuitously  vanished  entirely." 

It  was  at  that  same  chateau,  the  Chateau  de 
Silly  in  Normandy,  that  she  met  the  man  who 
was  to  colour  and  control  the  whole  of  her 
emotional  life.  The  young  Marquis  de  Silly  was 
not  at  the  chateau  when  Mademoiselle  Delaunay 
first  stayed  there  as  the  guest  of  his  sister,  but 
he  was  rarely  absent  from  their  conversations. 
His  extreme  selfishness  had  in  fact  a  rare  power 
of  creating  in  others  a  total  absorption  in  his 
interests ;  but  of  this  the  ardent  young  girl, 
ready  for  worship  and  seeking  it,  could  know 
nothing  yet.  Besides,  recent  circumstances  had 
contributed  to  lend  still  more  interest  to  his 
personality.  He  was  a  soldier ;  he  had  fought 
bravely,  had  been  taken  prisoner  at  the  battle 
of  Hochstadt l  and  sent  to  England.  There  he  had 
remained  for  some  time,  but, 

"owing  to  the  climate  of  that  country,"  as 
Mademoiselle  Delaunay  reports,  "he  had  been 
threatened  with  consumption,  and  had  obtained 

1  Better  known  as  the  battle  of  Blenheim,  13th  August  1704. 


FIRST  LOVE  11 

leave  to  return  to  France  on  his  parole;  the 
Paris  doctors  had  advised  him  to  go  to  Normandy 
to  breathe  his  native  air.  Monsieur  de  Silly  had 
spent  his  life  in  the  best  society  and  on  a  very 
agreeable  footing,  I  had  heard  so  much  about 
him  that  I  was  very  impatient  to  make  his 
acquaintance." 

However,  Mademoiselle  Delaunay  had  to  wait 
till  the  return  of  the  summer,^  for  Monsieur  de  Silly 
could  not  be  expected  to  endure  the  dullness  of 
a  winter  in  the  country!  The  wished-for  day 
arrived  at  last,  and  she  went  back  to  Silly  full 
of  anticipations. 

"The  son  of  the  house  was  expected,"  she 
writes,  "and  all  were  already  full  of  him.  He 
arrived;  everybody  went  to  meet  him.  I  went 
like  every  one  else,  but  with  a  little  less  pre- 
cipitation, and  when  I  arrived  upon  the  scene,  he 
was  already  going  up  the  stairs  to  his  apartments. 
He  turned  round  to  give  some  orders.  I  was 
struck  by  the  charm  of  his  expression,  and  by  a 
certain  nobility  in  his  bearing  which  made  him 
look  different  from  any  one  I  had  seen  before." 

From  that  ineffaceable  moment  her  love  for 
Monsieur  de  Silly  was  to  remain  the  strongest 
element  in  her  life,  and  his  indifference  was  but 
to  strengthen  her  passion. 

"  He  did  not  invite  conversation  from  any 
one,"  she  adds,  "and  sought  little  intercourse  at 


12  THE   MARQUIS   DE   SILLY 

first.  Some  books  which  he  had  brought  with 
him  afforded  him  companionship,  and  except  at 
meals,  he  was  rarely  seen.  But  although  he 
seldom  took  the  trouble  to  speak,  he  spoke  so 
well  and  with  so  much  grace  that  his  wit  shone 
in  spite  of  himself." 

After  this  note  of  infatuation  we  are  glad  to 
find  some  natural  feeling  of  pique. 

"His  charms  and  his  disdain  stung  me  to 
the  quick,  and  his  sister  who  had  seen  him 
more  sociable  was  hardly  less  hurt  by  it  than 
I  was;  this  formed  the  constant  subject  of  our 
conversations.  ..." 

And  then  we  hear  that  one  fine  day  this 
very  disdainful  young  hero,  wandering  through 
a  wood,  happened  to  overhear  his  name  and 
deigned  to  stop  and  listen.  Behind  a  hawthorn 
bush  two  young  girls  were  hotly  discussing  a 
subject  of  paramount  importance  to  himself — his 
own  personality.  He  listened  to  all  they  said — 
this  time  his  interest  was  fettered;  and  then  he 
stole  back  quietly  to  the  house,  awaited  their 
return,  and  told  them  that  he  had  overheard  a 
conversation,  that  it  had  been  about  himself — 
"qu'on  en  avait  dit  beaucoup  de  mal,  et  que  ce 
n'etait  pas  en  riant.  On  n'a  pas  envie  de  rire,  lui 
dis-je,  quand  on  se  plaint  de  vous.  ..."  O  charm- 
ing mixture  of  flattery  and  bold  sincerity ! — 
did  Monsieur  de  Silly  appreciate  the  tone  as 


"ABSOLUTE   HAPPINESS"  13 

much  as  the  preoccupation  with  his  character? 
Be  that  as  it  may,  henceforth  he  seemed  to 
find  these  two  negligeable  young  women  worthy 
of  his  society,  and  Mademoiselle  Delaunay  had 
the  "joy  to  see  continually  some  one  whose 
presence  was  sufficient  in  itself  to  cause  absolute 
happiness." 

The  whole  atmosphere  of  the  house  favoured 
the  expansion  of  her  feelings. 

"It  was  so  much  in  the  air,"  she  says,  "to  be 
wholly  absorbed  in  him,  that  I  could  follow  my 
inclination  to  it,  without  making  myself  con- 
spicuous. However,  my  actions  were  sometimes 
so  marked,  in  spite  of  myself,  that  they  could 
not  fail  to  carry  conviction.  One  day,  for  instance, 
I  had  given  him  a  purse  which  had  just  been 
sent  to  me  from  my  convent,  and  he  threw 
his  own  into  the  hands  of  one  of  his  mother's 
maids  who  was  not  among  the  least  of  his 
admirers.  Whether  I  wanted  to  have  that  purse 
or  merely  wanted  to  prevent  the  other  from  having 
it,  I  caught  it  in  the  air  before  it  reached  its 
destination,  and  that  in  the  presence  of  the 
old  Marquise  de  Silly,  a  very  grave  and  stern 
woman.  ..." 

Thus  Mademoiselle  Delaunay  gloried,  woman- 
like, in  throwing  all  prudence  to  the  winds,  as  a 
small  tribute  to  her  love.  Monsieur  de  Silly,  on  the 
other  hand,  exercised  all  that  male  caution  which 
is  so  conspicuous  whenever  passion  has  not  been 


14  THE  MARQUIS  DE  SILLY 

roused.  The  Memoirs  strike  a  little  note  of  irony 
on  that  subject. 

"  The  fear  of  giving  me  an  opportunity  to 
explain  myself  made  Monsieur  de  Silly  very 
careful  not  to  remain  alone  with  me.  I  was 
very  determined,  on  my  part,  not  to  say  any- 
thing to  him ;  yet  I  desired  passionately  that 
meeting  which  he  avoided  so  studiously,  and 
when  I  had  fully  understood  the  reason  of  his 
circumspection,  I  wished  even  more  fervently  ta 
have  with  him  some  private  conversation  which 
would  reassure  him  and  make  him  understand 
how  far  I  was  from  forgetting  what  I  owed  to 
myself." 

After  that  charming  little  outburst  of  youthful 
dignity,  she  tells,  with  a  smile  of  humorous  retro- 
spection, how  the  interview  came  to  pass. 

"  One  day,  as  we  were  starting  out  for  our 
usual  walk,  Mademoiselle  de  Silly,  not  feeling 
very  well,  decided  to  remain  at  home.  The  old 
Marquise,  anxious  to  provide  entertainment  for 
her  son,  asked  me  to  go  with  him.  We  walked 
as  far  as  a  big  meadow,  some  distance  away. 
He  was  walking  without  speaking,  much  more 
embarrassed  than  I  was ;  this  little  triumph  gave 
me  courage  to  speak,  and  I  remarked  upon  the 
beauty  of  the  fields ; — but  this  topic  not  seeming 
yet  distant  enough  from  the  subject  I  wished  to 
avoid,  I  left  mere  earth  for  the  heavens,  soared 
across  the  entire  planet  system  and  firmly  did  \ 


PAINS   OF  JEALOUSY  15 

hold  my  ground  in  those  transcendental  regions, 
until  we  got  back  to  the  chateau." 

It  was  a  small  triumph,  but  her  first  taste  of  the 
"bitter-sweet  herb  of  self-mastery" ;  and  after  long 
years  had  passed,  she  still  remembered  the  austere 
joy  with  which  it  had  filled  her  young  soul.  "  I 
experienced,"  she  says,  "that  delicious  exultation 
which  is  unknown  to  those  who  cannot  master 
the  impulses  of  their  heart." 

There  were  less  exalted  moments  to  recall 
also:  she  saw  Monsieur  de  Silly  flirt  with  rivals, 
and  she  was  outrageously  jealous.  One  of  these 
rivals  had  over  her  the  advantage  of  having 
travelled  in  England  and  in  Germany,  and  thus 
being  a  woman  with  whom  a  man  of  the  world  could 
compare  experiences !  Mademoiselle  Delaunay 
resented  this  bitterly,  but  to  hide  her  jealousy 
she  made  exaggerated  advances  to  her  rival ; 
she  made  all  the  mistakes  which  a  woman 
of  her  temperament  and  of  her  inexperience 
would  have  made,  but  she  never  attempted 
to  pull  her  hero  down  to  her  own  erring 
level  by  owning  to  any  imperfections  in  his 
conduct ! 

And  then  the  end  of  her  visit  to  Silly  drew 
near,  and  shortly  before  that  the  departure  of 
the  young  Marquis,  heralded  by  the  arrival  of 
mysterious  letters  and  packets  which  caused  many 
secret  conferences  between  mother  and  son,  and 


16  THE   MARQUIS   DE   SILLY 

great  heart-burnings  to  the  young  girl  who  was 
excluded  from  the  conversations. 

"I  perceived,"  she  writes,  "that  something 
which  was  of  great  importance  to  him  was  being 
discussed,  and  that  he  meant  to  say  nothing  of 
it  to  me.  This  seemed  to  me  an  insult;  I  no 
longer  spoke  to  him,  and  hardly  answered  when 
he  spoke  to  me.  He  noticed  my  displeasure, 
without  understanding  the  reason  of  it,  and  as 
he  felt  real  friendship  for  me,  he  wished  to  clear 
up  matters  and  to  appease  me.  He  stopped  me, 
therefore,  one  day,  when  I  was  about  to  enter 
the  Marquise  de  Silly's  apartment.  I  was  crossing 
very  hurriedly  a  hall  in  which  he  was  wandering 
about  aimlessly,  and  I  pretended  not  to  see  him ; 
but  he  came  up  to  me,  stopped  me,  and  made 
me  sit  down  by  his  side,  saying  that  he  wished 
to  talk  to  me.  He  spoke  with  so  much  charm 
and  feeling,  made  up  so  well  for  the  lack  of 
confidence  which  had  offended  me,  appeared  so 
touched  by  my  grief,  so  flattered  by  its  cause, 
that  I  never  felt  more  satisfied  with  him,  and 
more  comforted  about  the  power  which  he  had 
gained  over  me." 

That  unequal  relation  of  rather  flattered  friend- 
ship on  one  side  and  of  whole-hearted  devotion 
on  the  other,  never  changed  all  through  the  long 
years  of  their  intercourse,  and  in  speaking  of  it 
Mademoiselle  Delaunay  never  tried  to  give  her- 
self the  more  interesting  role  of  the  one  who  is 


MADAME  DE  STAAL-DELAUNAY 

(From  the  painting  by  MlGNARD) 


[To  face  /.    16- 


THE  FIRST  PARTING  17 

sought  for.  The  description  of  their  first  part- 
ing marks  the  contrast  very  sharply ;  its  abandon 
and  ingenuous  directness  make  of  it  a  real  little 
eighteenth-century  vignette. 

"His  departure,  though  there  was  nothing 
final  about  it,  caused  me  great  unhappiness,  but 
I  succeeded  pretty  well  in  saving  appearances. 
When  he  said  good-bye  to  us,  Mademoiselle 
de  Silly  burst  into  tears,  I  hid  mine  from  him, 
for  in  his  eyes  I  could  read  more  curiosity  than 
emotion ;  but  when  he  had  gone,  I  felt  as  if  life 
itself  had  left  me.  My  eyes,  accustomed  to  seek 
him  only,  had  no  more  desire  to  rest  on  anything ; 
I  no  more  deigned  to  speak,  since  he  could  hear 
me  no  more ;  it  seemed  to  me  that  even  thought 
had  left  me.  .  .  ." 

The  Marquis  de  Silly  went  back  to  court,  and 
the  enchanted  palace  which  he  had  left  behind 
him  turned  straightway  into  a  wilderness  from 
which  Mademoiselle  Delaunay  fled  back  to  her 
convent.  A  letter  from  the  Marquis  reached  her 
there  shortly  after,  a  letter  which  stirred  her 
emotions  so  much  that  thirty  years  later  she 
could  still  remember  every  feature  of  it. 

"  The  shape  and  the  appearance  of  this  letter," 
she  writes,  "have  remained  so  clearly  imprinted 
on  my  memory,  that  when  I  looked  for  it  just 
now,  in  connection  with  what  I  am  writing  (for 
I  have  always  kept  it,  as  I  have  done  with  nearly 


18  THE   MARQUIS  DE  SILLY 

all  the  letters  which  I  have  received  from  him) 
I  detected  it  at  once,  among  a  thousand  other 
letters." 

Yes,  the  hand  has  found  it,  the  eye  has 
detected  it  at  once,  the  senses  have  remained  in 
bondage,  but  the  independent  spirit  adds  its 
comment,  piquant  enough  to  be  worth  recording: 
"I  am  tempted  to  quote  the  letter  here,  in 
order  that  I  may  marvel  at  having  been  touched 
by  a  thing  so  little  touching.  ..." 

She  quotes  it  in  all  its  nakedness,  and  after 
having  read  it  and  some  others  which  followed 
in  the  course  of  time,  one  is  tempted  in  one's 
turn  to  ask  wonderingly  of  what  stuff  were 
made  these  chains  which  bound  Mademoiselle 
Delaunay  for  so  long.  The  letters  are  very  wise, 
sufficiently  witty,  but  selfish  and  cold  to  freezing 
point.  Their  recipient  kept  her  eyes  resolutely 
closed  to  this  for  a  long  time,  and  yet,  as  time 
passed,  the  selfishness  of  the  letters  increased 
steadily.  When  some  years  later  Monsieur  de 
Silly  was  in  Germany,  he  made  of  her  something 
between  an  errand  boy  and  a  weekly  gazetteer. 
She  owns  it,  with  her  usual  sincerity. 

"  His  letters  adopted  by  degrees  the  tone  one 
takes  with  a  business  agent.  I  have  received 
yours  of  the  ...th  instant,  pray  continue  to  inform 
me  of  what  is  taking  place  .  .  .  you  failed  to 


AN  UNAMIABLE   PEDANT  19 

apprise  me  of  such  and  such  a  thing  .  .  .  nothing 
more.  In  spite  of  this,"  she  continues,  "  I  was 
beside  myself  at  the  sight  of  his  writing  and  of 
his  seal.  I  awaited  with  the  greatest  impatience 
the  day  and  the  hour  of  their  arrival,  and  I  can 
well  remember  a  quarrel  I  once  had  at  Versailles 
with  a  courier  who  brought  me  one  of  his  letters 
and  would  neither  take  my  money  nor  give  me 
my  letter,  because  neither  of  us  had  any  change. 
In  vain  I  repeated  to  him  that  I  did  not  care 
about  the  change,  he  insisted  on  going  away  with 
the  letter,  saying  coldly,  '  I  will  call  again  later 
on.'  '  What  is  this?'  said  my  room  mate,  waked 
up  by  the  noise  we  were  making,  *  is  not  a  letter 
as  good  at  one  time  as  at  another  ? '  She  gave 
the  few  pence  required,  just  to  get  us  quiet,  and 
went  to  sleep  again." 

Although  Mademoiselle  Delaunay's  portrait  of 
her  hero  would  leave  our  mind  quite  unbiassed  in 
his  favour,  it  might  be  as  well  perhaps  to  hear 
other  opinions  about  him.  Grimm  calls  the 
Marquis  de  Silly  "  a  pedant — and  not  amiable  "  ; 
Saint-Simon  devotes  to  him  a  few  pages  of  a 
peculiarly  venomous  character.  He  shows  us  the 
cold  ambition  which  is  the  motive  power  of  all  his 
actions,  his  steady  rise  from  dignity  to  dignity, 
and  at  last  the  bitter  disappointment  which  so 
unhinges  his  mind  that  it  drives  him  to  suicide. 
Monsieur  de  Silly,  after  being  a  member  of  the 
Privy  Council  under  the  Regent's  administration, 


20  THE   MARQUIS   DE   SILLY 

had  hopes  of  entering  upon  a  ministerial  career, 
but  at  the  eleventh  hour  his  ambition  was 
frustrated.  Unable  to  bear  this  check  which 
seemed  to  destroy  the  efforts  of  a  lifetime,  he 
threw  himself  from  one  of  the  windows  in  his 
Chateau  de  Silly  and  was  killed.  There  is  only 
one  allusion  to  this  in  the  Memoirs,  and  it  is  full 
of  tenderness  and  of  the  wish  to  excuse  and  to 
explain. 

"  Ambition  was  the  mainspring  of  his  emotions," 
Mademoiselle  Delaunay  confesses,  "  and  perhaps 
it  has  obscured  his  virtues,  it  was  the  reason  of 
all  his  wrongs  and  the  cause  of  his  ruin  ;  yet  in 
him  ambition  seemed  less  a  wish  to  rise  above 
others  than  a  desire  to  take  the  place  which  was 
naturally  due  to  him." 


CHAPTER  III 

KNOCKING  AT  THE  DOOR  OF  FORTUNE 

A  GREAT  misfortune  befell  Mademoiselle  Delaunay 
just  after  she  had  reached  her  twenty  -  fourth 
birthday;  it  came  so  unexpectedly  and  so  swiftly 
that  the  catastrophe  was  upon  her  before  she 
had  had  time  to  face  its  inevitable  consequences. 
Madame  de  Grieu  fell  dangerously  ill,  and  died 
after  a  fortnight's  illness.  With  their  share  of 
human  perversity,  her  nuns  regretted  her  as 
much  after  her  death  as  they  had  tormented 
her  during  her  lifetime,  yet  in  spite  of  their 
tardy  show  of  affection,  they  passed  over  the 
only  practical  way  in  which  they  could  have 
testified  to  their  devotion. 

Madame  de  Grieu's  trusted  sister,  who  had 
resided  with  her  at  Saint  Louis,  had  considerable 
claims  to  the  position  of  abbess ;  but  old  intrigues 
were  renewed,  and  one  of  the  nuns  who  had 
once  headed  the  rebellion  was  chosen  for  the 
vacant  post.  Under  these  circumstances  it  was 
impossible  for  Mademoiselle  Delaunay  and  her 

benefactress  to  remain  at  Saint  Louis.     Madame 

21  s2 


22    KNOCKING  AT  THE  DOOR   OF  FORTUNE 

de  Grieu's  sister  could  have  retired  to  the  convent 
of  Jouarre  to  which  she  belonged,  but  she  would 
not  abandon  her  niece  and  the  young  girl  whom 
she  loved  as  dearly  as  a  daughter — and  yet  her 
small  income  was  not  sufficient  for  three  people. 

During  the  days  of  anxious  deliberations 
which  followed  many  offers  of  help  came  to 
Mademoiselle  Delaunay ;  and  they  prove  that 
she  must  have  understood  the  delicate  process 
by  which  love  is  changed  into  friendship. 
Monsieur  Brunei,  in  spite  of  many  past  rebuffs, 
besought  her  to  accept  a  considerable  sum  of 
money,  and  the  Abbe  de  Vertot,  impecunious  no 
more,  as  it  seems,  sent  her  from  Paris  a  letter 
containing  fifty  pistoles. 

She  returned  the  notes  and  refused  the  offers 
of  money,  determined  to  incur  no  obligations 
unless  she  saw  a  certain  chance  of  redeeming 
them.  Another  offer  was  perhaps  harder  to 
refuse :  it  came  from  unknown  quarters,  and 
an  imagination  more  open  to  compromise  than 
Mademoiselle  Delaunay's  might  have  seen  in 
it  an  effort  at  restitution  made  in  memory 
of  Madame  de  Grieu.  It  was  transmitted 
through  the  Frere  Maillard,  who  was  then  to 
the  famous  Pere  La  Chaise  what  the  much 
discussed  "Eminence  grise"  had  been  to  Cardinal 
Richelieu.  Less  skilful,  however,  than  his  wily 
confrere,  he  did  not  know  how  to  hide  his  credit 


AN  ANONYMOUS  KINDNESS  23 

with  the  king,  and  his  exile  to  Rouen  had  been 
decided  upon  and  announced  before  he  realised 
his  mistakes. 

It  was  a  very  innocent  intrigue  in  which 
he  was  helping  now;  he  brought  Mademoiselle 
Delaunay  the  necessary  sum  of  money  to  pay 
for  her  residence  at  the  convent  for  three  months, 
and  the  assurance  that  the  allowance  would  be 
continued  indefinitely,  -  on  "  condition  that  the 
recipient  would  remain  at  Saint  Louis. 

The  anonymous  giver  was  later  discovered  to 
be  the  Marquis  de  Silly,  and  the  clause  which 
stipulated  residence  at  the  convent  might  perhaps 
have  betrayed  the  man  who  felt  so  strongly 
the  desirability  and  the  necessity  of  regulations 
and  limitations  !  The  whole  proceeding,  however, 
in  its  delicate,  impersonal  generosity,  certainly 
vindicates  the  character  of  the  man  whom  former 
circumstances  had  somewhat  belittled.  A  letter 
which  he  wrote  to  Mademoiselle  Delaunay  a  little 
later,  when  she  was  staying  with  some  acquaintances 
at  a  small  hotel  in  Paris,  is  a  model  of  excellent 
feeling  and  of  youthful  censoriousness : — 

"  I  hear  that  you  are  in  Paris,  Mademoiselle, 
and  as  I  bear  a  great  interest  in  all  that  concerns 
you,  I  learned  with  great  pleasure  the  decision 
which  you  have  taken."  (Mademoiselle  Delaunay 
was  then  endeavouring  to  obtain  a  post  as 
governess).  "You  will  perhaps  be  surprised  to 


24     KNOCKING  AT  THE   DOOR  OF  FORTUNE 

find  this  letter  full  of  precepts ;  it  is  not  generally 
my  habit  to  give  advice,  still  less  to  write  it,  but 
I  count  you  one  of  my  friends,  and  I  feel  that  I 
ought  to  write  to  you  in  this  vein.  I  think  that 
with  the  aim  you  have  in  view,  the  shorter  time  you 
stay  in  furnished  apartments,  the  better  chance  you 
will  have  of  ultimate  success.  The  house  in  which 
you  are  now  is  not  one  from  which  I  should  wish 
you  to  make  your  first  acquaintance  with  Paris  life. 

"  I  shall  perhaps  seem  to  moralize  to  excess, 
but  I  feel  that,  in  your  place,  I  should  avoid 
any  coquetry  in  dress.  Your  youth  may  be  an 
obstacle  to  you,  and  it  is  in  your  interest  to  dis- 
simulate it.  I  should  wish  you,  for  the  same 
reason,  to  exercise  a  little  circumspection  in  the 
choice  of  your  friends,  and  to  be  more  desirous 
of  a  reputation  for  judgment  than  for  wit.  I  beg 
you  to  make  use  of  the  simplest  expressions  only, 
and  above  all  to  dispense  entirely  with  technical 
terms  ;  although  they  may  be  more  expressive  than 
others,  do  not,  I  pray  you,  yield  to  the  temptation 
of  using  them.  Finally,  I  should  wish  you  to  be 
occupied  solely  in  establishing  for  yourself  a  solid 
reputation,  without  trying  to  please  through  charm 
and  accomplishments.  I  fear,  however,  that  my 
last  precept  may  be  opposed  to  nature ;  the  wish 
to  please  might  be  very  natural  to  your  sex,  and 
without  asking  you  to  reverse  the  order  of  nature, 
let  me  beg  of  you  to  endeavour  to  please  through 
simplicity  only,  and  not  through  artifices. 

"  I  have  said  enough,  perhaps  too  much.  Adieu, 
Mademoiselle.  I  beg  you  to  be  assured  that  you 
can  confidently  count  on  me  most  assuredly." 


EFFORTS  AGAINST  DISCOURAGEMENT      25 

This  letter,  less  discerning  perhaps  than  well- 
meant,  did  not  altogether  please  the  girl  to  whom 
it  was  addressed.  Advice,  however  good,  may  be 
unreasonable,  and  although  Mademoiselle  Delaunay 
was  grateful  for  the  interest  shown  to  her,  she 
frankly  protested  against  the  necessity  of  so  much 
cautioning.  It  is  greatly  to  her  credit,  too,  that 
she  found  the  energy  to  retaliate,  for  the  coldness 
of  the  outer  world,  after  her  sheltered  retreat  of 
Saint  Louis,  was  a  paralysing  influence  indeed. 
In  her  Memoirs  she  laughs  retrospectively  at  the 
bitter  surprises  and  startling  disillusionments  of 
these  days.  While  Madame  de  Grieu  and  her 
nieces  were  staying  with  a  relative  who  had  not 
included  her  in  his  invitation,  she  was  obliged  to 
accept  a  very  casually  proffered  hospitality  at  the 
country  house  of  some  acquaintances.  Whilst 
there  she  one  day  had  a  bad  migraine,  and  it 
did  not  revolutionise  the  whole  household! 

"Before  then,"  she  says,  "my  migraines  had 
been  enough  to  engage  the  attention  of  the  whole 
convent,  from  the  abbess  to  the  lowest  sceur 
servante  \  Here  they  simply  sent  to  ask  whether 
I  needed  anything!  I  shall  never  forget  my 
surprise  in  seeing  treated  so  lightly  what  had 
before  been  attended  by  so  much  pomp." 

She  made  the  last  stage  of  her  journey  to  Paris, 
where  she  was  to  join  Madame  de  Grieu,  in  a 
company  of  which  her  self-instituted  mentor 


26     KNOCKING   AT  THE   DOOR  OF  FORTUNE 

would  have  disapproved  very  strongly.  Her 
travelling  companions,  Mesdemoiselles  de  Neuville, 
had  been pensionnaires  at  Saint  Louis;  the  eldest, 
a  girl  of  eighteen,  "extremely  pretty,  tolerably 
amiable,  with  no  money  and  very  little  distinction," 
moreover  a  thorough  adventuress  by  temperament, 
was  secretly  starting  for  Paris  with  her  younger 
sister  and  a  chaperone ;  and, 6i  women  never  having 
anything  more  pressing  to  do  than  to  tell  their 
secrets,"  she  had  confided  to  Mademoiselle 
Delaunay  the  object  of  her  journey.  It  seems 
that  an  old  Comte  de  Novion,  while  opposing  her 
marriage  with  his  son,  had  fallen  in  love  with  her 
himself.  Of  late,  however,  his  ardent  letters  had 
been  scarcer,  and  his  fervour  had  cooled  ominously. 
Mademoiselle  de  Neuville  had  therefore  determined 
to  take  the  matter  into  her  own  hands  and  to  bring 
the  pressure  of  her  presence  to  bear  upon  future 
developments.  Her  enterprising  spirit  might  well 
have  been  infectious,  but  it  did  not  rouse  exultant 
hope  in  her  sober  and  rather  sceptical  companion. 
Mademoiselle  Delaunay  was  starting  out  to  seek 
her  fortune  too,  but  Paris  frightened  her,  and 
she  had  nothing  wherewith  to  coax  its  favours, 
except  the  limited  resources  of  her  mind  and  a  very 
small  sum  of  money,  borrowed  from  a  distant 
relative. 

For  many  days  her  intellectual  accomplishments 
found  no  market ;  in  vain  she  peddled  them  from 


THREE  MONTHS'  RESPITE  27 

door  to  door,  with  her  letters  of  introduction  and 
her  heavy  heart.  At  last  she  had  to  fall  back  on 
the  small  funds  she  was  keeping  in  reserve,  and 
recklessly  devoted  all  the  money  she  possessed  to 
the  paying  of  three  months'  residence  at  the 
convent  of  the  "Presentation,"  where  Madame 
de  Grieu  and  her  niece  had  just  been  admitted 
as  dames  pensionnaires.  She  dared  not  look 
beyond  this  three  months'  respite,  and  when, 
towards  the  end  of  it,  she  fell  dangerously  ill, 
her  one  hope  was  that  death  might  come  as  a 
welcome  solution  to  an  otherwise  insoluble 
problem.  But  death  did  not  come ;  "  one  seldom 
dies  a  propos,"  she  remarks,  looking  back  on  those 
days  which  were  so  utterly  devoid  of  hope. 

The  solution  came  from  a  most  unexpected 
quarter.  Mademoiselle  Delaunay  had  in  Paris  an 
elder  sister  whom  she  hardly  knew,  and  who  was 
a  waiting  woman  to  the  Duchesse  de  la  Ferte. 
Pretty,  naturally  witty  and  graceful,  she  had  won 
the  Duchesse's  special  favour,  and  might  have 
offered  her  help  from  the  start,  had  she  wished  to 
do  so.  But  she  was  jealous  of  a  sister  whom  she 
had  once,  on  a  visit  to  Saint  Louis,  seen  courted 
and  adulated.  She  had  broken  off  all  relations 
with  her,  and  only  relented  now  that  she  saw  her 
so  utterly  "fallen  from  her  glory."  She  rushed  in 
one  morning  on  her  convalescent  sister,  with  all 
the  eagerness  and  importance  of  a  bearer  of  great 


28    KNOCKING  AT  THE   DOOR  OF  FORTUNE 

news.  On  accompanying  Madame  de  la  Fert£  to 
Versailles  the  day  before,  she  had,  it  seems,  told 
her  of  the  existence  of  her  younger  sister,  whom 
she  had  described  as  a  creature  of  innumerable 
talents  and  fathomless  knowledge.  "Knowing 
nothing  herself,"  says  the  modest  object  of  these 
laudations,  "  she  found  small  difficulty  in  believing 
that  I  knew  everything.  The  Duchesse,  who  was 
no  better  informed,  credited  all  she  heard,  and 
believed  me  to  be  a  prodigy ! " 

In  so  doing,  Madame  de  la  Ferte  was  only 
following  her  natural  bent;  she  was  famous  for 
taking  innumerable  and  unaccountable  fancies,  and 
no  one  attached  much  importance  to  the  ecstasies 
into  which  her  latest  discoveries  were  wont  to 
throw  her.  Her  imagination,  however,  was  not 
dependent  on  encouragement,  and  once  more  she 
had  arrived  at  Versailles,  full  of  a  new  interest, 
namely,  Mademoiselle  Delaunay !  She  talked  of 
"her  prodigy"  wherever  she  went,  especially  at 
her  sister's,  Madame  de  Ventadour,  where  she  met 
the  Cardinal  Rohan,  and  "said  a  hundred  more 
things  than  she  had  been  told." 

Imagination  is  a  kindling  fire.  By  degrees  the 
sceptical  audience  felt  its  glow,  and,  in  spite  of 
reluctant  commonsense,  was  drawn  by  degrees 
into  the  magic  ring  of  the  Duchesse's  fantasies. 
How  could  this  newly  discovered  treasure  be 
exploited  ?  What  fields  would  be  worthy  of 


TO   MAKE  PRODIGIES  29 

Mademoiselle  Delaunay's  activities  ?  An  eager 
discussion  followed :  if,  as  it  was  expected,  the 
Dauphine  should  give  birth  to  a  child,  and  if  that 
child  should  be  a  girl,  who  better  than  this 
"  genius "  could  imbue  the  mind  of  the  little 
Princess  with  all  knowledge  and  all  the  sciences  ? 
A  splendid  sphere  of  activity  in  truth,  but 
rather  distant  still,  it  had  to  be  owned,  and 
so  it  was  decided,  at  the  Cardinal  de  Rohan's 
suggestion,  that  Mademoiselle  Delaunay  should 
enter  the  convent  of  Jouarre,  where  the  Cardinal's 
three  nieces  were  being  educated,  and  that  once 
there,  she  should  "  make  prodigies  of  all  three.  ..." 

Before  the  girl,  who  had  just  been  staring  into 
the  black  emptiness  of  despair,  had  had  time  to 
feel  incredulous  at  these  promised  glories,  she  had 
been  urged  by  her  sister  to  dress  immediately  and 
to  go  and  present  her  respects  to  the  Duchesse, 
who  was  that  very  day  going  back  to  Versailles. 
There  was  a  prosaic  obstacle  in  the  way :  the 
future  mentor  of  royal  princesses  had  no  seemly 
dress  to  wear,  and  was  obliged  to  borrow  one, 
just  for  two  or  three  hours,  from  a  pensionnaire 
at  the  convent.  Thus  attired  in  borrowed  clothes, 
and  feeling  as  uncomfortable  in  mind  as  she  did 
in  body,  she  started  out  with  her  sister. 

The  Duchesse  was  just  preparing  to  dress  when 
they  arrived ;  she  at  once  declared  her  future 
protegee  charming.  "  She  was  bound  to  do  so,  she 


30    KNOCKING  AT  THE   DOOR  OF  FORTUNE 

owed  it  to  her  imagination,"  says  Mademoiselle 
Delaunay,  before  proceeding  to  describe  in  her 
Memoirs  the  very  characteristic  scene  which 
follows. 

"After  a  few  simple  and  perhaps  rather  flat 
remarks  which  I  made,  '  Really,'  she  exclaimed, 
6  Mademoiselle  speaks  entrancingly,  and  she  has 
come  just  in  time  to  write  to  Monsieur  Desmarets 
a  letter  which  I  want  him  to  receive  at  once. 
Here,  Mademoiselle,  they  will  give  you  some 
paper,  you  will  only  have  to  write ! '  '  Write 
what,  Madame  ? '  I  rejoined,  in  some  perturbation. 
'  You  will  turn  it  just  as  you  like,'  she  continued, 
6  only  it  must  be  well  expressed.  I  want  him  to 
grant  me  what  I  am  asking.'  '  But,  Madame,'  I 
objected,  '  it  would  at  least  be  necessary  to  know 
what  you  want  to  say  to  him ! '  '  No,  no,  you 
understand.' ' 

From  a  few  disconnected  remarks,  the  impro- 
vised secretary  at  last  succeeded  in  catching  at  a 
guiding  thread,  and  very  diffidently  presented  her 
production  to  the  Duchesse.  Great  was  its  success. 
"This  is  exactly  what  I  wanted  to  tell  him," 
exclaimed  Madame  de  la  Ferte,  "it  is  truly 
wonderful  that  she  should  have  expressed  my 
very  thoughts  !  Henriette,  your  sister  is  astonish- 
ing ;  and  since  she  writes  so  well,  she  must  write 
another  letter,  to  my  lawyer  now,  it  will  be  done 
by  the  time  I  am  dressed." 


ON  THE   WAY  TO   VERSAILLES  31 

A  torrent  of  explanations  followed  —  facts, 
names,  commentaries;  the  writer  was  naturally 
perplexed,  and  made  some  confusion  in  the  names. 
The  Duchesse's  criticism  after  reading  this  letter 
has  a  flavour  quite  its  own :  "  The  business  is  well 
stated,"  she  remarked ;  "  but  I  cannot  understand 
how  a  girl  with  so  much  wit  could  call  my  lawyer 
by  the  name  of  my  attorney."  "Thus,"  says 
the  defaulter,  "she  discovered  the  limits  of  my 
genius !  Luckily  it  did  not  entirely  rob  me  of 
her  esteem." 

The  interview  came  to  an  end  at  last;  the 
unwilling  secretary  heaved  a  sigh  of  relief,  and 
the  Duchesse  had  already  stepped  into  the  coach 
which  was  to  take  her  to  Versailles  when  a  new 
idea  occurred  to  her.  "  I  think,"  she  said  to  her 
protegee,  "that  I  had  better  take  you  with  me; 
come  in,  come  in,  Mademoiselle,  I  will  show 
you  to  Madame  de  Ventadour."  With  speechless 
dismay  Mademoiselle  Delaunay  obeyed,  and  not 
the  least  of  her  anxieties  was  the  thought  of  the 
dress  which  she  had  borrowed  for  two  hours, 
and  in  which  she  seemed  likely  to  be  taken  round 
the  world ! 

The  Duchesse  was  delighted  with  her  plan.  All 
the  way  to  Versailles  she  talked  with  even  more 
than  her  usual  verve,  and  the  girl,  who  felt  very 
keenly  the  element  of  danger  which  lurked  in 
her  patroness'  versatility,  was  yet  fascinated,  in 


32    KNOCKING  AT  THE   DOOR  OF  FORTUNE 

spite  of  herself,  by  her  absolute  naturalness  and 
her  irresistible  piquancy.  Completely  engrossed 
by  her  interest  of  the  moment,  Madame  de  la 
Ferte  was  making  it  yield  its  utmost.  Was 
Mademoiselle  Delaunay  really  acquainted  with  all 
the  sciences  which  her  sister  had  enumerated? 
The  Duchesse  enumerated  them  herself,  mispro- 
nouncing them  for  the  most  part,  but  with 
a  warmth  of  tone  which  showed  true  regard, 
in  spite  of  unfamiliarity.  She  would  approach 
them  all  seriously  some  time  or  other,  and 
with  one  of  them  at  least  she  felt  quite  at 
ease ;  she  put  it  forward  eagerly :  "  As  you  are 
so  learned,  Mademoiselle,"  she  said,  "you  will 
no  doubt  be  able  to  tell  me  my  horoscope;  it 
is  the  thing  which  interests  me  most  in  the 
world." 

Great  was  her  surprise  on  hearing  that  this 
profound  science  had  been  neglected  by  her 
interlocutor. 

"  But,"  she  exclaimed,  "  what  was  the  object 
of  studying  so  many  other  things,  which  are 
perfectly  useless  ? " 

The  arrival  at  the  Duchesse's  apartments  in 
Versailles  is  somewhat  of  a  revelation  as  to  the 
kind  of  pied-a-terre  with  which  the  great  nobles 
were  satisfied  when  they  followed  the  king  to 
his  favourite  residence.  Of  the  miraculous  effect 
of  true  monarchic  feeling  on  weary  muscles  and 


KNOCKING  AT  THE   DOOR  OF  FORTUNE    33 

exhausted  nerves,  we  hear  a  good  deal  in  the 
Memoirs  of  the  time.  They  have  pencilled  many 
a  portrait  of  the  perfect  courtier,  standing 
obsequiously  for  hours  in  the  king's  antechamber, 
first  on  one  foot,  then  on  the  other,  as  much  a 
part  of  the  royal  furniture  as  any  of  the  gilded 
chairs  along  the  walls,  and  with  as  little  impetus 
to  move  away  as  they;  and  still  the  case  of 
Madame  de  la  Ferte  throws  some  sidelights  of 
its  own  upon  this  subject. 

As  a  Duchesse,  she  was  spared  some,  but  by 
no  means  all,  of  the  physical  discomforts  of  Court 
life.  To  her,  for  instance,  belonged  by  right  of 
rank  the  privilege  of  the  tabouret,  that  divin 
tabouret  as  Madame  de  Sevigne  calls  it,  for  the 
sake  of  which  one  of  her  friends  had  married  the 
ugliest  man  in  the  kingdom.  But  when  the  Court 
was  at  Versailles,  Madame  de  la  Ferte's  tabouret 
dwelt  dans  les  combles  right  under  the  roof,  in 
the  dark,  garret-like  rooms  in  which  its  owner 
herself  resided.  "It  was  so  high  up,"  says 
Mademoiselle  Delaunay,  "that  if  one  of  the 
servants  had  not  carried  me  up  the  last  flight 
of  stairs,  I  should  never  have  reached  the 
top." 

She  reached  it,  dazed  in  mind  and  exhausted 
in  body;  she  was  but  convalescent  yet,  and  her 
nerves  were  beginning  to  give  way.  For  several 

hours    she    waited    for   some    message    from   the 

c 


34    KNOCKING   AT  THE  DOOR  OF  FORTUNE 

Duchesse,  who  had  gone  straight  to  her  sister's, 
Madame  de  Ventadour.  No  message  came,  how- 
ever, and  she  was  only  shaken  out  of  her  apathy 
by  the  stormy  arrival  of  the  Duchesse  herself,  who 
on  her  side  had  waited  all  afternoon  to  exhibit 
her  new  discovery,  and  whose  indignation  was 
only  equalled  by  the  impetuosity  of  her  reproaches. 
No  excuses  could  pacify  her !  What  had  been  a 
misunderstanding  was  to  her  a  gross  disregard  of 
her  commands;  Mademoiselle  Delaunay's  chances 
were  ruined,  irretrievably  lost ! 

The  storm  raged,  ran  its  course,  subsided,  and 
was  followed  by  smiling  serenity.  The  loss  of 
to-day,  she  promised  herself,  was  to  be  com- 
pensated by  the  glories  of  to-morrow,  and  the 
morrow  was  filled  to  overflowing  with  over- 
whelming honours:  a  visit  to  Madame  de 
Ventadour,  to  the  Due  de  Bretagne,  to  the 
future  Louis  XV. — still  a  child  in  his  cradle — an 
inspection  of  all  the  sights  of  Versailles,  a  never 
ceasing  stream  of  newcomers,  anxious  to  see  the 
"  prodigy  whose  reputation  was  already  spreading ! " 
Madame  de  la  Ferte  was  filled  with  exultation, 
and  at  the  souper  du  Roi  to  which  she  dragged 
her  "protegee "  as  a  befitting  end  to  so  great  a 
day,  she  insisted  on  calling  the  Due  de  Bourgogne's 
attention  to  her  and  her  innumerable  talents  and 
accomplishments. 

This    introduction    to     the    great    world    of 


WIT  WHILE   YOU   WAIT  35 

Versailles  lasted  five  days.  "I  felt,"  says 
Mademoiselle  Delaunay,  "as  if  I  were  a  monkey 
made  to  exhibit  his  tricks  at  a  country  fair/' 
There  are  certain  scenes  in  this  little  Versailles 
comedy  which,  as  they  appear  in  the  "  Memoires," 
might  have  been  taken  straight  from  the  "Bour- 
geois Gentilhomme."  Here  is,  for  instance,  an  un- 
conscious parody  of  Monsieur  Jourdain's  childish 
delight  in  showing  off  the  Turkish  speech  of  his 
pseudo  Turkish  friend : 

"Madame  de  la  Ferte,"  says  Mademoiselle 
Delaunay,  "  having  gone  to  the  Duchesse  de 
Noailles,  bade  me  join  her  there.  I  arrived. 
'This  is,  Madame,'  she  said,  'the  person  of 
whom  I  have  spoken  to  you,  who  is  so 
witty  and  who  knows  so  many  things ;  allons, 
Mademoiselle,  speak !  Madame,  you  will  see  how 
well  she  speaks ! '  She  saw  me  hesitate  and, 
treating  me  like  a  singer  who  must  execute  a 
little  prelude  in  order  to  clear  her  voice,  and  to 
whom  one  proposes,  for  that  purpose,  a  theme 
which  one  would  like  to  hear.  '  First  speak  a 
little  about  religion,'  she  said  to  me,  'after  that 
you  will  talk  of  something  else ! '  My  confusion 
was  such  that  it  defies  description,  and  I  cannot 
even  remember  how  I  extricated  myself  from 
this  difficulty!" 

In  spite  of  so  many  efforts,  the  brilliant  results 
pictured  by  Madame  de  la  Ferte's  imagination 
were  not  forthcoming.  Versailles  saw,  listened, 


36     KNOCKING   AT  THE   DOOR  OF  FORTUNE 

commented,  and  passed  on  to  other  interests. 
The  Duchesse  was  full  of  indignation,  especially 
against  her  sister  and  the  Cardinal  de  Rohan, 
who  had  woven  the  first  shimmering  threads  of 
that  golden  vision,  the  education  of  the  Dauphine's 
problematic  daughter.  Now,  no  one  even  pro- 
posed to  pay  the  "  pension "  necessary  for 
Mademoiselle  Delaunay's  admittance  into  the 
convent  of  Jouarre,  where  the  Cardinal's  three 
nieces  were  waiting  in  vain  to  be  "turned  into 
masterpieces ! " 

On  the  evening  of  her  fifth  day  in  Versailles, 
Madame  de  la  Fertd  returned  to  her  apartments 
in  a  fine  fury  against  her  unappreciative  friends. 
"Eh  bien!"  she  said,  speaking  to  Henriette 
Delaunay,  "since  they  want  so  much  pressing,  I 
shall  do  without  them ;  1  am  myself  in  a  position 
to  make  her  fortune.  I  shall  take  her  into  my 
own  household;  she  will  be  better  off  with  me 
than  anywhere  else." 

"This  was  just  what  I  feared,"  comments 
Mademoiselle  Delaunay.  "  I  remained  speechless 
and  motionless,  unable  to  make  up  my  mind  to 
acquiesce  either  by  word  or  gesture;  luckily  she 
was  too  excited  herself  to  notice  my  impassibility." 

The  few  days  which  the  discriminating  young 
girl  had  spent  with  the  whimsical,  inconsequent 
women  had  been  sufficient  to  make  her  feel  the 
danger  of  the  favours  held  out  to  her.  She  had 


CHEATING  THE   ROBBERS  37 

learned  the  number  of  rivals  already  existing  in 
the  Duchesse's  household  ;  she  knew  that  besides 
her  sister,  whose  jealousy  she  was  naturally 
unwilling  to  rouse,  there  was  a  certain  Louison 
who  had  been  raised  from  the  position  of  waiting 
woman  to  that  of  a  confident^  and  also  a  Sylvine, 
belle  comme  le  jour,  a  young  peasant  girl  whom 
Madame  de  la  Ferte  had  picked  up  in  the  fields 
on  one  of  her  estates.  "  SHe  idolised  this  nymph, 
and  spared  no  money  to  enhance  her  charms  and 
to  cultivate  her  talents,  chief  among  which  was  an 
admirable  voice.  These  fancies  were  forsaken  one 
after  the  other,  in  fact  their  fate  was  as  inevitable 
as  that  of  Circe's  lovers." 

Even  the  greatest  judiciousness  would  have 
been  of  no  avail  in  such  a  whirlpool  of  unexpected 
happenings.  No  one  could  calculate  the  Duchesse's 
movements,  and  her  unconventionally,  though 
undoubtedly  refreshing,  was  apt  to  be  disconcert- 
ing at  times.  At  her  country  house,  for  instance, 
she  would  assemble  round  a  table  not  only  her 
maids  and  valets,  but  also  ther  purveyors,  butchers, 
bakers,  grocers,  and  play  cards  with  them.  "  I 
cheat  them,"  she  would  whisper  delightedly  into 
the  ear  of  one  of  her  house  guests,  "  but  then 
they  rob  me !  " 

Gourmets  were  wise  in  exercising  circum- 
spection towards  her  invitations,  for  unpleasant 

surprises    might    be    in    store    for    them.      Her 

c  2 


38    KNOCKING  AT  THE   DOOR  OF  FORTUNE 

country-house  guests  once  fared  very  indifferently, 
as  at  the  last  moment  she  had  refused  to  take 
her  cook  with  her.  That  presumptuous  individual 
had  asked  her  for  new  spits.  "  Always  new  spits  ! " 
she  had  exclaimed,  "this  is  the  way  in  which 
great  houses  are  ruined.  The  Marechal  de  la 
Ferte  spent  twelve  hundred  thousand  francs  on 
spits.  No !  rather  than  give  in,  I  will  eat  my 
porter's  food."  And  she  did,  and  her  unfortunate 
guests  shared  it  with  her,  only  they  had  not,  to 
sustain  them,  the  uplifted  feeling  which  comes 
to  those  who  do  great  deeds  of  justice ! 


CHAPTER   IV 

THE  DUC  AND  DUCHESSE  DU  MAINE 

MADEMOISELLE  DELAUNAY  begged  to  be  allowed 
some  time  to  consider  the  proposition  of  her 
erratic  patroness,  though  the  latter  had  been 
drawing  a  very  tempting  picture  of  the  things 
which  were  to  be :  a  private  apartment  at  her 
Paris  residence,  where  Mademoiselle  Delaunay 
was  to  be  entirely  her  own  mistress,  one  of  the 
ducal  carriages  always  at  her  disposal,  and,  above 
all,  no  compulsion  of  any  kind.  This  Elyseum  was, 
however,  not  quite  ready ;  the  private  apartment, 
for  instance,  had  yet  to  be  built,  but  this  circum- 
stance was  quite  a  negligeable  one  to  a  mind 
like  Madame  de  la  Ferte's. 

After  her  disappointment  at  the  undiscerning 
attitude  of  Versailles,  the  Duchesse  had  expressed 
the  decision  to  go  back  to  Paris  immediately,  and 
Mademoiselle  Delaunay  was  thinking  with  long- 
ing of  the  peaceful  retreat  at  "  La  Presentation  " 
to  which  she  would  return  at  last,  when  Madame 
de  la  Ferte  suddenly  changed  her  mind  again. 
She  would  go  on  to  Sceaux  and  show  her 

39 


40      THE  DUC  AND  DUCHESSE   DU   MAINE 

protegee  to  the  Duchesse  du  Maine,  the  "  queen  " 
of  Versailles'  rival  court. 

Mademoiselle  Delaunay  knew  the  Duchesse  du 
Maine  by  reputation ;  there  could  hardly  have  been 
any  one  in  France,  however  slightly  acquainted 
with  court  Society,  who  did  not  know  the  "  Queen 
of  Sceaux,"  the  one  woman  who  had  dared  to 
shake  off  the  heavy  yoke  of  Versailles,  to  seek 
pleasure  in  her  own  way,  and  to  achieve  power 
by  her  own  methods. 

Her  unconquerable  individuality  and  prodigious 
energy  were  racial  traits,  as  were  also  her  wilfulness 
and  her  predisposition  to  eccentricity.  Anne 
Louise  B£n£dicte  de  Conde,  Duchesse  du  Maine, 
was  the  granddaughter  of  that  famous  Conde 
who  had  led  the  armies  of  France  and  used  his 
indomitable  courage,  his  boundless  energy,  and 
reckless  impetuosity  now  for,  now  against,  his 
king,  but  who,  in  spite  of  many  errings,  has  gone 
down  to  posterity  as  "  le  grand  CondeY' 

His  son,  Henri- Jules  de  Bourbon,  the  Duchesse's 
father,  had  inherited  his  seething  vitality  and 
turbulent  ambition ;  but  the  only  healthy  field 
for  the  development  of  his  energies  being  denied 
him  in  consequence  of  a  natural  distaste  for  war, 
his  activities  degenerated  into  active  eccentricities, 
and  his  ambition  to  govern  into  household  tyranny. 
His  wife,  a  Bavarian  princess,  reduced  by  fear  to 
a  meek  and  passive  Griselda,  endeavoured  with 


ANNE   LOUISE   DE   CONDE, 
DUCHESSE  DU  MAINE. 


To  face  p.  40. 


MAGNIFICENCE  AT  CHANTILLY  41 

shaking  limbs  and  ever  perturbed  mind  to  obey 
her  master's  whims.  To  anticipate  them  would 
have  been  impossible:  unexpectedness  was  the 
very  essence  of  the  Prince's  decision  ;  and  the 
entire  household  was  at  the  mercy  of  his  vagaries. 
No  trust  could  be  placed  in  the  stability  of  even 
the  most  elementary  time  -  sanctioned  household 
rites,  and  Henri-Jules  de  Bourbon's  family  never 
knew  where  or  when  they  would  dine.  If,  for 
instance,  dinner  had  been  ordered  at  Chantilly, 
Monsieur  le  Prince  would  at  the  last  moment 
decide  that  he  could  only  dine  at  his  Paris 
residence ;  but  hardly  had  the  lumbering  coach 
conveying  the  family  to  the  capital,  reached  the 
end  of  the  avenue,  when  postilions,  coachman, 
and  coach  would  have  to  turn  back,  as  dinner 
in  Paris  seemed  impossible. 

"  Monsieur  le  Prince,"  says  the  luxury-loving 
Due  de  Saint-Simon,  "was  most  magnificent  in 
his  liberalities."  Magnificence  was  one  of  the 
enduring  traditions  of  Chantilly ;  its  majestic 
proportions,  imposing  terraces,  and  stately  gardens 
proclaimed  it  equal  to  any  royal  residence.  The 
Condes  received  regally  and  entertained  lavishly 
the  King  and  a  retinue  of  several  hundreds  of 
courtiers,  and  once  when  through  untoward  circum- 
stances something  had  happened  which  threw  dis- 
credit on  the  perfection  of  all  appointments,  their 
chief  steward  Vatel,  deeming  his  honour  lost,  had 


' 
42       THE  DUC   AND  DUCHESSE  DU   MAINE 

not  hesitated  to  take  his  own  life.  Monsieur  le 
Prince  remembered  it  well:  the  tardy  arrival  of 
the  fish  ordered  for  the  royal  tables  on  Good 
Friday  morning,  the  hurried  search  for  Vatel,  the 
discovery  of  his  desperate  deed.  There  is  an  echo 
of  all  this  in  one  of  Madame  de  Sevigne's  letters, 
of  the  impression  it  made  on  host  and  guests,  on 
the  sensitive  opinion  of  Paris  ever  ready  to  extol 
or  to  blame,  of  the  effect  on  Monsieur  le  Prince, 
on  Monsieur  le  Due,  whom  the  episode  stamps 
for  ever  with  a  little  touch  of  ridicule.  "They 
blamed  and  they  praised  his  courage,  .  .  .  Monsieur 
le  Prince  was  in  despair.  .  .  .  Monsieur  le  Due 
cried,  he  had  counted  entirely  on  Vatel  for  the 
comforts  of  his  journey  to  Burgundy.  .  .  ." 

Now  that  Henri-Jules  was  head  of  the  house 
of  Conde  his  liberalities  were  often  as  useless  as 
they  were  extravagant.  To  ensure  comfort  for 
his  gallantries,  for  instance,  he  bought  the  whole 
of  one  side  of  a  Paris  street,  had  a  communica- 
tion established  between  all  the  houses,  and 
furnished  them  with  the  greatest  luxury.  His 
mind,  inclined  at  all  times  to  deviate  from  the 
straight  road  of  commonsense,  sometimes  lost 
its  bearings  altogether,  especially  during  the  latter 
part  of  his  life.  During  these  excesses  he  used 
to  fancy  himself  a  hound,  and  pursued  with  his 
barkings  some  imaginary  deer.  Even  the  awe- 
inspiring  presence  of  the  King  could  not  dispel 


THE  CHIEF  OF  THE   CONDES  4$ 

his  idee  -fixe.  Out  of  respect  for  the  august 
presence  he  would  then  desist  from  his  "  roarings," 
but  his  mouth  continued  to  open  and  close 
mechanically  in  voiceless  yapping. 

Another  of  his  fancies  might  have  proved  fatal 
to  himself;  he  would  at  times  declare  that  he  was 
dead,  and  very  logically  refuse  to  eat.  Luckily 
his  logic  was  as  easily  swayed  as  that  of  any 
opportunist.  One  of  his  physicians,  a  resourceful 
man,  assured  him  at  those  times  that,  although 
the  dead  do  not  eat  as  a  rule,  he  knew  of  some 
who  did,  adding  that  his  Serene  Highness  would 
do  well  to  dine  with  them.  The  Prince  generally 
consented  quite  readily  to  join  the  more  convivial 
of  the  departed  spirits,  and  a  sumptuous  table  was 
laid  for  them.  The  physician,  usually  present  at 
these  "  agapes  "  of  a  new  kind,  published  later  on 
some  of  the  strange  conversations  he  had  heard, 
and  alluding  light-heartedly  to  the  famous  work 
written  by  Fenelon  for  the  Due  de  Bourgogne, 
he  used  to  say  that  he  also  had  published  his 
"  Dialogues  des  Morts." 

The  even-mannered,  well-regulated  Bavarian 
Princess,  whom  Madame  de  Maintenon  calls  in  one 
of  her  letters  "  la  vertue  meme"  seems  to  have  had 
as  little  part  in  the  making  of  her  children's 
temperament  as  in  the  ruling  of  her  house.  The 
Bourbon  joie  de  vivre  transmitted  straight  to  them 
from  their  jovial  ancestor  Henry  IV.  was  in  all 


44      THE   DUG  AND  DUCHESSE   DU   MAINE 

these  Condes.  The  brother  of  the  Duchesse  du 
Maine,  Monsieur  le  Due,  worthy  son  of  his  father, 
and  with  the  same  taste  for  expensive  privacy  in 
his  affaires  de  cceur,  ordered  to  be  built  for  his 
mistress,  the  beautiful  Madame  de  Prie,  a  coach 
painted  grey  on  the  outside  to  look  like  a  hackney 
coach,  the  inside  of  which,  however,  was  lined  with 
velvet  and  brocade,  and  embossed  with  solid  gold. 
The  history  of  the  alliances  of  the  Conde's  in 
that  generation  is  an  illustration  of  a  royal  measure 
which  had  raised  the  most  violent  criticism  at  the 
Court.  A  few  years  before  Anne  Louise  Benedicte 
became  Duchesse  du  Maine,  Monsieur  le  Due,  her 
brother,  had  been  compelled  to  marry  Mademoiselle 
de  Nantes,  the  King's  illegitimate  daughter  by 
Madame  de  Montespan.  Never  was  Louis  XIV.'s 
stupendous  tyranny  over  all  the  royal  family 
exercised  more  autocratically  than  in  this  vexed 
question  of  the  marriages  of  his  bastards.  Re- 
luctance, indignation,  rebellion,  where  there  was 
courage  for  rebellion,  were  of  no  avail,  and  princes 
of  the  blood  had  to  obey  without  reward,  where 
noblemen  were  bribed  by  heavy  prices.  During 
the  latter  part  of  his  reign  the  King  seems  to  have 
found  a  peculiar  pleasure  in  ignoring  all  rules  of 
decency  in  this  matter,  and  in  flaunting  before  the 
eyes  of  all  Europe  the  scandalous  alliances  between 
his  legitimate  and  his  illegitimate  descendants. 
Even  the  Due  d'Oiieans,  future  Regent  of  France, 


"A  LITTLE  TIMID  MOLE"  45 

who  stood  so  near  the  throne  that,  at  one  time, 
he  all  but  felt  the  magic  touch  of  the  crown  within 
his  grasp,  had  been  forced  to  accept  as  his  wife 
the  illegitimate  Mademoiselle  de  Blois. 

Convention  has  decided  that  in  the  husband's 
power  lies  the  subtle  virtue  of  changing  the  caste 
of  the  woman  he  weds.  No  such  occult  trans- 
formation, however,  could  excuse  and  glorify  the 
marriage  of  the  Duchesse  du  Maine,  and  the 
alliance  of  the  proud  daughter  of  the  Condes  with 
the  puny,  lame  son  of  Madame  de  Montespan  had 
roused  very  active  comments.  The  Due  du  Maine 
had  no  personal  magnetism,  no  outward  fascination 
wherewith  to  win  public  favour.  Nature  had  not 
cut  him  out  for  a  hero,  and  it  is  difficult  even  to 
conjure  up  his  shifty,  shadowy  personality  ;  but  the 
best  silhouette  of  him,  perhaps,  is  that  drawn  by 
Saint  -  Simon's  masterpen,  though  it  is  partly 
dictated  by  personal  spite.  "  The  Due  du  Maine," 
he  says,  "  was  a  little  timid  mole,  excessively  clever 
and  cunning  in  reaching  his  goal  through  under- 
ground passages,  but  blind  and  groping  above 
ground,  shrinking  and  ineffective. "  His  un- 
conquerable timidity,  was  partly  the  result  of  his 
deformity  which,  from  his  childhood  onward,  had 
made  him  shun  public  notice ;  and  yet  he  had 
been,  in  a  manner,  an  infant  prodigy,  whose  writings 
were  handed  round  to  a  circle  of  intellectual  con- 
noisseurs, and  who,  at  the  age  of  seven,  had  seriously 


46      THE  DUC   AND  DUCHESSE  DU  MAINE 

been  proposed  by  a  fawning  courtier  for  a  vacant 
seat  at  the  Academy  ! 

He  had  been  Madame  de  Maintenon's  favourite 
pupil,  and  her  love  for  him  bordered  on  idolatry. 

"  Monsieur  le  Due  du  Maine  is  ill,"  she  writes, 
in  1674  to  the  Abbe  Gobelin,  her  confessor,  "... 
it  is  a  terrible  thing  to  see  loved  ones  suffer. 
I  feel,  with  excessive  grief,  that  I  do  not  love 
this  child  less  than  I  loved  the  other,1  and  this 
weakness  on  my  part  caused  me  to  weep  all 
through  Mass  ;  nothing  is  more  foolish  than  to  love 
to  such  excess  a  child  who  is  not  mine,  and  over 
whose  future  I  shall  never  have  any  influence." 

The  delicate  child's  frequent  illnesses  seem 
to  be  an  ever-recurring  refrain  in  Madame  de 
Maintenon's  letters.  "  Monsieur  le  Due  du  Maine 
a  la  fievre  quarte."  ..."  Monsieur  le  Due  du 
Maine  a  la  fievre  double  quarte."  Nothing  that 
devotion  could  suggest  was  omitted  on  her 
part  to  strengthen  the  child's  weak  constitution  ; 
she  took  him  to  the  wonder-working  waters  of 
Barege  in  the  Pyrennees,  she  even  went  secretly 
with  him  to  Holland,  to  consult  a  certain  famous 
quack  doctor  who  was  supposed  to  effect 
miraculous  cures.  The  quack  did  his  best, 
pulled  the  shorter  leg  of  his  little  patient  with 
confident  vigour,  but  when  Madame  de  Maintenon 
brought  her  little  charge  back  to  France,  the 

1  Madame  de  Montespan's  first  child  who  died  in  1672, 


DEVOTED   PARTISANSHIP  47 

short  leg  was  longer  than  the  normal  one,   and 
the  limping  had  only  changed  sides. 

The  tenderness  which  had  watched  over  the 
childhood  of  the  Due  du  Maine,  merged  by 
degrees  into  the  devoted  partisanship  which 
sought  by  all  possible  means  to  strengthen  his 
position  at  Court.  No  doubt  it  was  not  love  un- 
alloyed which  prompted  Madame  de  Maintenon's 
efforts ;  ambition  lurked  in  the  background,  and 
also  hatred  against  the  Due  d'Orleans  and  his 
faction,  a  hatred  ever  ready  to  foster  the  King's 
natural  distrust  of  his  nephew,  but  though  mixed 
with  baser  passions,  her  feeling  had  all  the  force 
which  removes  mountains.  Her  power  of  persuasion 
certainly  had  been  strongest  in  overcoming  the 
King's  reluctance  to  provide  an  establishment 
for  his  illegitimate  son.  "  Ces  enfants,"  he  had 
remarked,  "ne  sont  pas  pour  faire  souche,"  but 
Madame  de  Maintenon  had  overthrown  his 
objections  one  by  one. 

When  at  last  the  marriage  of  the  Due  du 
Maine  was  discussed,  as  a  real  proposition,  the 
King's  attention  was  directed  towards  the  Conde 
princesses,  the  three  daughters  of  Mousieur  le 
Prince.  They  had  been  waiting  for  an  "  establish- 
ment" rather  longer  than  would  have  been  admitted 
by  their  rank,  but  the  smallness  of  their  stature 
might  well  have  caused  suitors  to  demur.  They 
were  so  small,  so  infinitesimally  small,  that  their 


48      THE   DUG  AND  DUCHESSE   DU   MAINE 

sister-in-law,  the  former  Mademoiselle  de  Nantes, 
who  never  missed  an  opportunity  to  prick  the 
Conde  pride,  had  nicknamed  them  "  les  poupees 
du  sang." 

Anne  Louise  Benedicte,  on  whom  the  King's 
choice  fell  at  last,  was  thirteen  years  old,  and 
the  tallest  and  prettiest  of  the  sisters ;  the 
"royal  command"  which  reached  Monsieur  le 
Prince  on  behalf  of  the  Due  du  Maine  would 
have  seemed  preposterous  a  few  years  before,  but 
the  way  to  it  had  been  prepared  in  some  measure 
by  the  marriage  of  Monsieur  le  Due  de  Bourbon 
with  Mademoiselle  de  Nantes,  and  the  Prince  de 
Conde  acceded  to  the  King's  wishes,  won  over 
by  the  consideration  of  Monsieur  du  Maine's 
very  marked  favour  at  Court,  and  of  the  enormous 
riches  which  he  had  inherited  from  the  grande 
Mademoiselle. 

Had  the  consent  of  Anne  Benedicte  been 
asked,  she  would  have  given  it  most  unreservedly ; 
but  the  natural  omission  of  this  formality  did 
not  trouble  her.  She  wasted  not  one  thought 
on  the  unprepossessing  appearance  of  the  man 
whom  fate  had  selected  for  her  husband,  but 
determined  without  further  ado  to  use  his  credit 
with  the  King  for  the  purpose  of  scaling  those 
giddy  heights  to  which  her  ambition  secretly 
aspired.  Even  without  ambition,  she  would  have 
greeted  with  delight  this  open  door  into  the 


OPINION  OF  DE   MAINTENON  49 

freedom  of  married  life,  this  way  of  escape  from 
the  restraint  of  Chantilly,  and  from  the  out- 
bursts of  rage  of  Monsieur  le  Prince,  who  "  beat 
his  wife  and  his  children  most  brutally,"  as  Saint- 
Simon  assures  us.  The  little  Princesse  de  Conde 
was  passionately  fond  of  pleasure,  and  her  child- 
hood had  been  utterly  devoid  of  it.  Power  and 
pleasure  were  the  two  rare  gifts  which  she 
expected  from  her  new  position,  and  from  the  day 
of  her  marriage  she  set  to  work  to  pursue  her 
end  with  the  most  admirable  single-mindedness. 

Madame  de  Maintenon  also  had  founded  great 
hopes  on  the  Due  du  Maine's  marriage,  but  her 
hopes  were  to  be  utterly  frustrated.  Her  letters 
about  the  young  bride,  written  in  the  first  glow 
of  her  delight,  are  full  of  the  tenderest  solicitude. 

"God  grant,"  she  writes  in  1692,  to  Madame 
de  Brion,  a  religieuse  at  the  convent  of  Mont- 
buisson,  "that  they  (the  King  and  Monsieur  du 
Maine)  may  be  as  satisfied  with  this  marriage 
as  I  am  at  present.  I  am  told  that  she  (Madame 
du  Maine)  is  to  spend  the  holy  week  at  Mont- 
buisson.  Make  her  rest  well ;  she  is  being  worn 
out  here  by  the  constraint  and  the  fatigues  of 
the  Court ;  she  is  weighed  down  with  gold  and 
precious  stones,  and  her  head-dress  is  heavier 
than  the  whole  of  her  person.  It  will  prevent 
her  from  growing  and  from  keeping  in  good 
health,  and  she  is  even  prettier  without  her  head- 
dress than  with  all  her  adornments;  she  hardly 


50      THE   DUC  AND  DUCHESSE   DU   MAINE 

eats,  she  does  not  get  enough  sleep,  and  I  am 
very  much  afraid  that  they  may  have  married  her 
too  young.  I  should  like  to  keep  her  at  Saint-Cyr, 
dressed  like  one  of  my  veriest  and  running  about 
the  gardens  as  light-heartedly  as  they." 

A  later  letter,  addressed  to  the  same  friend, 
sounds  a  slight  note  of  misgiving.  Madame  de 
Maintenon's  confidence  in  her  power  to  influence 
the  small  Duchesse  is  slightly  shaken. 

"I  should  not  like  her  to  be  a  devote  de  pro- 
fession" she  writes,  "  but  I  must  confess  to  you 
that  I  should  have  liked  to  see  her  more  regular 
in  her  religious  duties,  and  leading  a  life  which 
would  be  pleasing  in  the  eyes  of  God,  of  the 
King,  and  of  Monsieur  le  Due  du  Maine,  who 
has  enough  wisdom  to  wish  his  wife  to  be  '  steadier ' 
than  some  others.  Apart  from  that,  she  is,  as  you 
described  her,  pretty,  amiable,  gay,  witty,  and, 
above  all,  she  loves  her  husband,  who,  on  his 
side,  loves  her  passionately,  and  will  spoil  her 
rather  than  give  her  any  pain.  If  she  evades  me, 
I  shall  give  up  my  efforts,  convinced  that  it  is 
not  possible  for  the  King  to  find  in  his  family  a 
woman  who  can  be  influenced  for  good." 

The  last  sentence  is  most  significant.  Madame 
de  Maintenon  had  counted  on  finding  in  the 
little  princess  a  malleable  nature,  ready  to  be 
used  for  any  purpose,  an  invaluable  link  with 
the  great  Conde'  family,  and  a  child  who  might 

1  Some  of  the  youngest  pupils  at  Saint-Cyr. 


A  RIVAL  COURT  51 

by  cajoleries  and  caresses  win  from  the  King 
such  favours  as  it  would  be  inconvenient  to 
formulate  in  the  lucid,  well-reasoned  speech  for 
which  La  Marquise  de  Maintenon  was  famous. 

The  Duchesse  du  Maine  came  to  Versailles, 
was  present  at  the  levers  and  the  couchers,  the 
grands  converts  and  the  petits  converts,  walked 
back  and  forth  with  a  crowd  of  Tartuffe  courtiers 
to  numberless  masses  at  the  Chapel  Royal, 
followed  the  royal  hunt  to  Marly  in  the  King's 
own  carriage,  with  all  the  windows  down 
(according  to  Louis  XIV.'s  "odious"  habit),  her 
powder  and  her  rouge  at  the  mercy  of  wind 
and  dust  and  sun.  She  went  through  the  whole 
gamut  of  Court  pleasures,  decided  that  Versailles 
was  the  very  temple  of  ennui,  and  determined 
without  hesitation  to  shun  it  forthwith.  Her 
passion  for  pleasure  should  have  its  dues  and 
her  ambition  should  find  its  satisfaction  at  the 
same  time ;  the  Duchesse  du  Maine  would  have 
her  own  court,  a  rival  of  Versailles,  and  perhaps 
in  time  a  favoured  and  triumphant  rival.  A 
great  dream  for  a  small  Duchesse,  but  she  made 
it  come  true,  and  though  her  triumph  was  short- 
lived, its  taste  was  none  the  less  exhilarating. 
She  did  not  ask  her  husband's  opinion  as  to  her 
plans,  for  his  opinion  in  all  things  was  from 
the  first,  and  remained  to  the  last,  a  matter  of 
perfect  indifference  to  her. 


52      THE   DUG  AND  DUCHESSE   DU  MAINE 

After  two  or  three  unsuccessful  attempts  at 
finding    the    ideal    spot    for     her     "Parnassus," 
Madame     du     Maine     persuaded     the    Due,     at 
Colbert's    death,    to    acquire    Sceaux,    the    vast 
domain  on  which  the  famous  controleur  general 
had   erected   a   sumptuous   palace.       Very    little 
remains  of  it   now,  and  though   it  is   constantly 
mentioned  in  the  writings  of  the  period,  it  would 
be   hard   to  trace  its   real  outlines,   through  the 
haze    of   allegorical    effusions   lavished    upon    it, 
and  the  processions  of  gods  and  goddesses,  cupids 
and   sylphs  which  are  for   ever  winding  in  and 
out    of    its    sylvan    glades.       Its    more    prosaic 
admirers,  however,  give  us  some  facts :  the  stately 
gardens     had     been     designed    by     Lenotre,     of 
Versailles    fame,    and     the    famous    Puget    had 
adorned    them    with    gleaming    marble    statues ; 
beyond  the  park  stretched  the  softly  undulating 
valley  of  the  Bievre  in  all  its  simple  charm  and 
discreet     serenity,     full     of    mobile     lights     and 
shadows,   and   of  the  sound   of  bubbling  water. 
The   hills    which    surrounded    this   Arcadia,    and 
the  river  winding  round  its   confines,  made  it  a 
little  world  in  itself.     Madame  du  Maine  declared 
it  enchanting. 


CHAPTER  V 

/ 

THE    COURT  OF   SCEAUX 

THE  little  court  of  Sceaux  had  reached  the 
twelfth  year  of  its  power,  and  its  "  sovereign " 
was  commonly  alluded  to  as  the  "Divinity  of 
Sceaux,"  when  on  one  (for  her)  memorable  day 
of  the  year  1710,  Mademoiselle  Delaunay  was 
introduced  to  it  by  her  indefatigable  cicerone, 
the  Duchesse  de  la  Ferte.  Though  something 
of  its  fame  was  known  to  her,  she  was  not  pre- 
pared for  the  orgy  of  entertainments — theatrical, 
intellectual,  operatic,  gastronomic — which  filled  the 
days  she  spent  there.  "  This  way  of  living,"  she 
exclaims  with  curt  disparagement,  "  seemed 
unbearable  to  me." 

And  indeed  the  slavery  of  Court  life  at 
Versailles,  from  which  Madame  du  Maine  had  fled 
with  such  determination,  was  as  supreme  liberty 
compared  with  the  exactions  of  the  Court  of 
Sceaux.  To  live  there  was  to  attempt  to  move 
through  the  glorious  inconsequence  of  a  fairy  tale, 

in  defiance  of  all  the  natural  frailties  inherent  to 

53  D  2 


54,  THE  COURT  OF  SCEAUX 

the  human  body.  Shame  upon  him  who  enter- 
tained any  idea  of  sleep  at  night,  or  of  rest  at 
any  time  of  the  day !  Let  him  rank  with  the 
unthinking  brutes,  who  could  eat  of  a  dish  lacking 
the  condiments  of  anagrams  and  epigrams,  or  don 
his  doublet  and  hose  without  being  reminded  of 
Achilles  or  Hercules,  and  straightway  informing 
of  this,  in  gallant  verses,  Madame  la  Marquise  or 
Madame  la  Comtesse  next  door,  who  in  their 
turn  must  needs  find  inspiration  for  a  worthy 
retort. 

Madame  du  Maine  had  decreed  that  "gaiety 
should  ever  be  coupled  with  wit,"  and  not  one  of 
the  irrevocable  laws  of  the  Medes  and  Persians 
could  ever  have  called  for  more  herculean  efforts 
than  this.  Music,  dancing,  acting,  were  but  the 
commonplace  foundations  upon  which  the  fancy  of 
her  courtiers  must  weave  ever  new  and  original 
designs.  The  Duchesse  had  excellent  professional 
performers  to  execute  the  mechanical  part  of  her 
entertainments ;  but  the  ideas  came  from  her 
and  her  satellites.  The  best  dancers  from  the 
"  Academic  de  Danse "  in  Paris  were  often  called 
to  Sceaux,  and  must  often  have  been  dismayed  at 
the  extravagances  presented  to  them.  One  can 
imagine  their  amazement  at  the  following  fancy, 
for  instance,  which  sprang  from  the  brain  of 
Malezieu,  chief  wit  of  intellectual  Sceaux,  and 
occurs  in  a  divertissement  in  which  he  appears 


THE   ELIXIR  OF  TERPSICHORE  55 

himself  as  half-magician,  half-quack.  Producing  a 
little  flask  labelled  "  Esprit  de  contredanses,"  he 
harangues  his  audience  in  the  following  startling 
fashion.  "  The  liquid  which  you  see  here  has  virtues 
which  could  not  be  enumerated  in  a  century. 
Let  some  one  show  me  the  most  delicate  lady  in 
the  world,  the  least  flighty,  the  most  sedentary, — 
if  she  allows  but  one  drop  of  this  elixir  to  fall  upon 
her  in  the  region  of  the  nips,  you  will  see  her 
instantly  more  agile  than  a  spirit  of  the  air,  now 
clear  a  haystack  at  one  bound,  now  soar  like  a 
balloon  and  dance  the  'Fontaine,'  the  'Pistolet,' 
the  *  Derviche,'  the  '  Sissone,'  the  *  Fricolets,' 
and  'Madame  la  Mare." 

If  adaptability  were  required  of  the  dancers, 
great  modesty  was  necessary  in  the  actors.  When 
they  left  the  stage  of  the  Comedie  Francaise  in 
Paris,  to  answer  some  bidding  from  Sceaux,  they 
had  to  forswear  ambition  also,  for  it  was  Madame 
du  Maine's  habit  to  claim  all  the  most  important 
parts  for  herself — comedy  or  tragedy,  a  farce  or 
an  allegory,  she  undertook  all  with  equal  confidence, 
and  was  always  ready  to  spend  interminable  hours 
in  learning  her  parts. 

"  I  cannot  understand,"  said  the  Due  du  Maine, 
in  whom  the  histrionic  faculty  was  lacking,  "  why 
the  Duchesse  should  take  so  much  trouble  in  order 
to  appear  on  the  planches  in  public,  like  a  mere 
professional  mummer ! " 


56  THE  COURT  OF  SCEAUX 

In  this  case,  as  in  most  others,  she  could  dis- 
pense with  her  husband's  approval,  for  she  was 
strongly  supported,  and  by  her  own  set ;  the 
Due  de  Nevers,  the  Comte  d'Harcourt,  the  Due 
de  Coislin,  the  Marquis  de  Sassay,  the  Duchesse 
d'Enghien,  the  Duchess  of  Albemarle,  the  Comtesse 
d'Artagnan,  the  Duchesse  de  Choiseul  figured 
among  the  many  who  formed  an  assiduous  and 
enthusiastic  audience.  Even  Madame  la  Princesse 
came  and  looked  on,  wondering  each  time  afresh 
at  the  unaccountable  tastes  of  her  puzzling  daughter ; 
and  Monsieur  le  Prince  came  too,  with  a  mis- 
chievous light  in  his  strange  burning  eyes  which 
set  his  whole  face  aglow.  He  looked  on,  and 
remembering  the  delight  he  had  taken  in  donning 
all  manner  of  disguises  to  add  spice  to  his  entre- 
prises  d'amour,  he  found  it  easier  no  doubt  than 
his  unimaginative  wife  to  account  for  what 
he  saw. 

It  was,  of  course,  chiefly  to  the  "intellectual 
bureau  "  of  the  court  that  Mademoiselle  Delaunay 
was  to  be  exhibited.  Where  the  demand  for 
intellect  was  so  great,  a  well-organised  supply 
was  indispensable,  and  Madame  du  Maine  had  a 
small  corps  of  familiers,  whose  task  and  profession 
it  was  to  be  witty,  philosophical,  ingenuous,  or 
profound,  according  to  the  needs  of  the  moment. 
First  and  foremost  among  these  was  Malezieu, 
the  former  tutor  of  the  Due  du  Maine ;  a  brilliant 


§  r 


CQ  W 

i  2 

I—  i  v^J 

=  I 

u  u 

S  g 


THE   ABBE   GENEST  57 

mathematician,  an  able  writer  and  fertile  rhymester, 
he  was  the  oracle  of  Sceaux.  "  His  decisions,"  says 
Mademoiselle  Delaunay,  "  were  as  infallible  as  the 
conclusions  of  Pythagoras,  and  the  most  heated 
disputes  ceased  as  soon  as  some  one  declared :  he 
has  said  so." 

Among  the  lesser  lights  shone  1'Abbe  Genest, 
a  worthy  rival  of  Moliere's  Mascarilk,  who  had 
put  into  verse  the  whole  of  Descartes's  Treatise  on 
Physics ;  his  other  claims  to  intellectual  apprecia- 
tion are  unknown,  and  his  former  career  is  hardly 
enlightening  in  this  matter.  After  being  an  ox- 
driver,  he  had  become  an  abbe  and,  as  such,  had 
been  engaged  as  overseer  of  the  Due  de  Nevers's 
stables;  those  who  now  enjoyed  his  society  at 
Sceaux  might  often  have  seen  him  there  discharg- 
ing his  congenial  duties  among  horses  and  stable- 
boys,  striding  along  in  his  cassock,  and  using  with 
great  point  and  fluency  the  vocabulary  he  had 
acquired  in  his  oxen-driving  days ! 

Others  were  there  who  were  more  obviously 
fitted  to  their  sphere:  the  President  Renault, 
whose  wit  is  sufficiently  guaranteed  by  the  life- 
long admiration  of  Madame  du  DefFand,  quickest 
of  all  quick  wits,  sharpest  of  all  sharp  tongues ; 
Fontenelle,  the  pearl  of  philosophers  and  scientists, 
for  drawing-room  use ;  and  later  on  Voltaire,  in 
all  the  verve  of  unbridled  youth. 

Madame    du   Maine   took   but  little  heed   of 


58  THE   COURT  OF  SCEAUX 

Madame  de  la  Ferte,  when  the  latter,  just  as  full 
of  her  discovery  as  if  Versailles  had  not  scorned 
it,  insisted  on  vaunting  her  protegees  talents.  It 
was  not  the  custom  of  the  divinity  of  Sceaux  to 
waste  her  time  on  other  people's  interests  ;  she 
hardly  looked  at  Mademoiselle  Delaunay,  and 
nothing  remained  to  Madame  de  la  Ferte  but  to 
turn  to  Monsieur  de  Malezieu,  and  beg  the 
"oracle"  to  pronounce  himself  on  the  value  of 
her  treasure.  He  did  so,  as  we  learn  from  the 
Memoirs,  after  spending  a  considerable  time  in 
conversation  with  Mademoiselle  Delaunay,  and 
discussing  with  her  several  matters  in  which  he 
found  her  tolerably  well  informed. 

"His  wish  to  oblige  Madame  de  la  Ferte," 
says  the  judicious  object  of  this  cross  examination, 
"  a  natural  inclination  to  exaggeration  and  perhaps 
also  a  certain  desire  to  help  me,  made  him  confirm 
all  the  marvels  which  had  been  proclaimed  about 
me.  He  declared  that  I  was  an  exceptional  person, 
and  people  believed  it ;  they  never  tired  of  admiring 
me.  Baron,  the  famous  comedian  who  had  left  the 
Paris  stage  thirty  years  before,  was  just  then  acting 
at  Sceaux.  He  prided  himself  upon  his  wit,  and 
came,  like  the  others,  to  examine  mine.  During 
one  of  his  visits  he  said  to  me  ironically  that 
Les  Femmes  Savantes  would  be  acted  the  next  day, 
and  that,  without  doubt,  he  would  see  me  there. 
I  made  him  understand,"  continues  his  worthy 
opponent  in  this  fencing  with  words,  "  that '  quand 


BACK   IN  THE   CONVENT  59 

bien  meme  on  jouerait  les  femmes  Savantes,  il  ne 
me  jouerait  pas ! ' 

Thus    we   learn   that   flattery   had    its    sting    at 
Sceaux,  as  it  has  in  less  Olympian  circles. 

Mademoiselle  Delaunay  was  much  relieved, 
when  at  last  she  was  allowed  to  return  to  more 
commonplace  haunts.  She  took  leave  of  Madame 
de  la  Ferte,  who  deposited  her  at  the  gates  of  the 
convent  with  "  a  thousand  caresses,"  and  as  many 
assurances  that  she  would  see  her  again  before 
long.  "  If  the  affair  at  Sceaux  is  not  concluded 
speedily,"  she  added,  with  her  customary  optimism, 
"  I  shall  take  other  measures." 

In  truth  there  were  soon  palpable  proofs  that 
the  Duchesse's  energies  had  not  abated.  A  few 
chansons  composed  by  Monsieur  de  Malezieu 
were  sent  to  Mademoiselle  Delaunay,  with  a 
request  that  she  should  write  an  appreciation  of 
them,  which  Madame  de  la  Ferte  would  under- 
take to  remit  into  the  author's  hands.  "I  do 
not  remember  what  I  wrote,"  says  the  improvised 
critic,  "  many  praises  apparently,  for  they  brought 
me  a  magnificent  answer."  It  is  quite  evident 
that  this  timely  praise  did  more  to  convince 
Malezieu  of  the  writer's  wisdom  than  the  most 
oracular  speeches  which  could  have  dropped  from 
her  lips  during  their  past  conversations.  His 
answer,  as  a  pretty  example  of  the  lavishness 


60  THE   COURT   OF  SCEAUX 

with  which  at  that  time  people  meted  out  praise 
to  themselves  and  to  their  neighbours,  deserves 
to  be  read,  at  least  in  part. 

"  You  have  persuaded  me  so  entirely  of  the  pre- 
cision and  the  infallibility  of  your  judgment  that 
it  is  not  possible  for  me  to  differ  from  you.  And 
now,  Mademoiselle,  by  the  knowledge  which  you 
must  have  of  your  own  self,  I  beg  you  to  tell 
me  what  I  must  think  of  your  merit.  Great 
geniuses  like  you  cannot  under-rate  themselves. 
They  render  to  themselves  the  justice  which  they 
extend  to  others,  nothing  is  more  inherent  to 
them  than  their  power  of  discernment,  and  even 
the  greatest  effort  of  their  modesty  can  but  tend 
towards  gratitude  to  the  first  origin,  to  the 
Eternal  author  of  their  talents.  You  owe  Him, 
Mademoiselle,  more  gratitude  than  any  one  else, 
and  I,  on  my  side,  owe  infinite  thanks  to  Madame 
la  Duchesse  de  la  Ferte,  for  having  graciously 
consented  to  unfold  to  me  so  rare  a  treasure.  I 
should  esteem  myself  happy,  if  it  were  permitted 
to  me,  to  approach  it  sometimes,  and  if  I  might, 
were  it  but  once  in  my  life,  testify  by  my  services 
to  the  esteem  and  the  sincere  respect  with  which 
I  am,  Mademoiselle,  yours,  etc.  etc.  MALEZIEU. 
"  At  SCEAUX,  on  the  30th  of  May  1710." 

This  epistle,  with  its  rhetorical  peroration, 
much  encouraged  Madame  de  la  Ferte,  and  she 
was  of  the  opinion  that  it  should  be  taken 
seriously.  There  were  renewed  visits  to  Sceaux 


CARDINAL  DE   ROHAN  61 

in  consequence,   days  full    of  fetes    and    of   the 

assurances  of  Monsieur  de  Malezieu's  "  increasing 

esteem  "  but  with  no  substantial  results.     Madame 

du  Maine  made  no  sign  of  wishing  to  add  to  her 

intellectual  collection,  and  Madame  de  la  Ferte  still 

oscillated  between  her  wish  to  secure  her  discovery 

for  herself   and   her  fear  of   offending   Louison, 

Sylvine,  and  other  domestic  nymphs  and  tyrants. 

A  satisfactory  solution  seemed  as  far  as  ever, 

when  at  last  Madame  de  Ventadour  intervened. 

She    was    a    well    poised,  judicious   woman,   and 

sincerely  desirous  of  furthering  the  interests  of  a 

talented  young  girl  whose  mother  had  once  belonged 

to  her  household.      She  reminded  the  Cardinal  de 

Rohan  of  his  alluring  suggestions,  but  the  Cardinal 

eluded  all  responsibility.      He  did  it  gracefully 

and  tactfully,  as  was   his  custom,  but  none  the 

less   decidedly.      In   truth  little  sympathy   could 

be  expected  from  the  Cardinal,  and  this  was  only 

one  of  the  many  instances  which  might  serve  to 

illustrate  his  character,  as  drawn  later  on  by  the 

shrewd  and  keen-sighted  Marquis  d'Argenson. 

"  His  politeness,"  he  says  of  De  Rohan,  "  knows 
so  well  how  to  wear  the  mask  of  friendship  or 
of  interest  that  even  while  one  realises  that  it  is 
not  sincere,  one  is  fascinated  by  it.  Whenever 
you  meet  him,  he  seems  to  have  a  thousand 
confidences  to  make  to  you,  but  he  soon  leaves 
you  to  run  on  to  another." 


62  THE   COURT  OF  SCEAUX 

This  time  the  Cardinal  masked  his  indifference 
behind  very  befitting  scruples;  before  anything 
could  be  done,  Mademoiselle  Delaunay's  religious 
soundness  must  be  tested,  and  the  exact  shade 
of  her  convictions  ascertained  —  a  very  plausible 
plea  from  a  zealous  defender  of  the  true  doctrine, 
at  a  time  when  Jesuits,  Jansenists,  and  Quietists 
made  the  echoes  of  France  ring  with  their  dis- 
sensions, but  it  ill-befitted  the  man  in  praise  of 
whose  religion  all  d'Argenson  finds  to  say  is  that 

"  he  discharged  his  religious  duties  without  betray- 
ing either  too  much  boredom  or  too  much  devotion, 
and  that  he  was  careful  not  to  debase  the  Church 
in  his  person  by  satisfying  his  taste  for  gallantry 
only  with  great  princesses  and  high  born 
chanoinesses" 

As  may  easily  be  inferred,  the  Cardinal  did  not 
propose  to  burden  himself  with  the  examination 
of  Mademoiselle  Delaunay's  religious  views — let 
those  decide,  he  urged  judiciously,  who  knew  her 
in  her  early  years.  Monsieur  de  Fontenelle  was 
accordingly  consulted  on  the  subject;  but  here 
again  indifference  threatened  to  check  advance. 
The  philosopher's  chief  object  in  life  was  to  keep 
himself  immune  from  the  wear  and  tear  of  human 
responsibilities ;  he  could  not  allow  altruistic 
efforts  to  mar  the  perfection  of  a  constitution 
which  was  to  carry  him  serene  and  safe  into  his 
hundredth  year ;  and  so,  dismissing  the  subject  in 


A  SPIRITUAL  EXAMINATION  63 

as  few  words  as  possible,  Monsieur  de  Fontenelle 
declared  that  all  he  knew  about  this  was  that 
Mademoiselle  Delaunay  had  been  brought  up  in 
a  convent  under  the  Jesuits.  Reassuring  as  this 
sounded  to  devotees  of  religious  court  etiquette, 
it  was  hardly  exhaustive,  and  the  Abb£  de  Fressan, 
future  Archbishop  of  Rouen,  was  called  in  by 
Madame  de  la  Ferte  to  conduct  the  examination 
on  more  business-like  principles.  He  arrived,  and, 
according  to  Mademoiselle  Delaunay,  his  orthodox 
method  in  doctrinal  examination  consisted  in  an 
interchange  of  pleasantries,  to  which  the  young 
postulant's  contributions  were  so  apt  that  they 
won  her  the  most  favourable  testimonials! 

Her  newly  -  acquired  certificates  of  religious 
soundness  did  not  lead  directly  to  anything,  but 
why  give  up  hope  ?  There  was  certainly,  as  Madame 
de  la  Ferte  truthfully  remarked,  "no  scarcity  of 
young  girls,  daughters  of  great  houses,  who  were 
in  need  of  a  good  education,  and  in  still  greater 
need  of  good  principles." 

The  Duchesse  was  discussing  this  question  one 
day  with  one  of  those  abbes,  whose  little  black 
collets  were  constantly  flitting  in  and  out  of 
salons  and  boudoirs,  and  he  bethought  himself 
that  Madame  la  Princesse  might  be  glad  to  avail 
herself  of  such  superior  talents  for  the  education  of 
her  niece,  Mademoiselle  de  Clermont.  Monsieur 
de  Malezie\i,  hearing  of  this  suggestion,  thought, 


64  THE  COURT  OF  SCEAUX 

with  masculine  simplicity,  that  he  could  hasten 
matters  by  getting  Madame  du  Maine's  recom- 
mendation, but  he  only  delayed  everything  by 
rousing  in  his  patroness  the  truly  feminine  dis- 
position to  discover  a  sudden  fascination  in  any- 
thing offered  to  another  woman.  "  If  this  girl 
has  so  much  merit,"  exclaimed  the  Duchesse  with 
irrefutable  candour,  "  why  give  her  to  my  niece  ? 
Would  it  not  be  better  to  engage  her  for  myself  ?  " 

Monsieur  de  Malezieu  agreed  most  heartily, 
and  the  affair  might  have  been  considered  as 
settled,  had  its  conclusion  depended  on  more  stable 
factors  than  Madame  du  Maine  and  Madame  de  la 
Ferte.  A  sudden  jealousy  leaped  up  between 
them,  a  duel  of  outraged  feeling  ensued,  and 
grieved  astonishment,  indignant  surprise,  haughty 
aloofness,  accusations  of  double-dealing,  afforded 
fine  weapons  for  either  opponent,  and  were  wielded 
indiscriminately  by  both. 

Meanwhile  Mademoiselle  Delaunay  was  still 
at  the  convent,  still  without  anything  to  do,  but 
to  bear  from  time  to  time  with  the  Duchesse  de 
la  Ferte's  stormy  scenes,  to  read  her  volcanic 
letters,  and  to  steer  as  best  she  could  between  her 
anger  and  her  infatuation.  In  this  manner  months 
went  by,  and  the  young  girl's  natural  diplomacy 
seems  to  have  forsaken  her  during  that  unhappy 
time ;  she  deplores  it  herself  in  her  Memoirs,  and 
holds  herself  responsible  to  a  great  extent  for  the 


MADEMOISELLE   D'ORLEANS, 
DAUGHTER  OF  THE  REGENT  PHILIPPE  D'ORLEANS. 


To  face  p.  64. 


AN  OPENING  AT  COURT  65 

fatal  consequences.  One  or  two  unwise  letters 
in  which  she  described  her  position  to  Monsieur 
de  Malezieu  fell  into  Madame  de  la  Ferte's  hands, 
and  brought  about  a  denouement  which  proved 
to  be  a  vengeance,  planned  and  carried  out  in  one 
of  the  Duchesse's  impulsive  moods. 

A  very  non  -  committal  letter  was  the  first 
herald  of  the  catastrophe.  It  was  addressed  to 
Mademoiselle  Delaunay  by  Monsieur  de  Malezieu 
and  ran  thus : — 

"  At  last,  Mademoiselle,  the  time  has  come. 
I  am  bidden  by  Madame  la  Duchesse  du  Maine 
to  inform  you  that  she  has  determined  not  to 
demur  any  longer.  It  will  be  a  great  pleasure 
to  me,  Mademoiselle,  soon  to  be  in  a  position  to 
render  you  some  slight  services,  and  to  prove 
to  you  in  deed  that  I  am,  beyond  all  expression, 
your  very  humble,  etc.,  etc. 
11  At  SCBAUX,  on  the  llth  Sept.  1711." 

A  fulminating  epistle  from  Madame  de  la  Ferte 
accompanied  this,  at  the  end  of  which  she  ordered 
Mademoiselle  Delaunay  to  come  to  Sceaux  the 
next  day,  where  she  would  herself  present  her 
to  Their  Serene  Highnesses,  the  Due  and  the 
Duchesse  du  Maine. 

Henriette  Delaunay,  who  had  brought  the  two 
letters,  completed  her  mission  by  enlightening  her 
sister  as  to  their  true  significance.  It  seems  that 
one  of  Madame  du  Maine's  waiting- women  having 


66  THE   COURT  OF  SCEAUX 

been  dismissed,  her  place  had  been  judged  good 
enough  for  Mademoiselle  Delaunay,  whose  reputa- 
tion was  very  much  on  the  wane.     Madame  de  la 
Ferte  had  strongly  advocated  this  as  a  means  of 
revenge ;  and  she  promised  herself  much  pleasure 
from  the  spectacle  of  her  former  protegee's  humilia- 
tion.    "  I  foresaw  my  ruin  in  this  event,"  says  the 
victim  of  these  circumstances,  "  and  I  felt  that  the 
indelible  mark  of  servitude  upon  me  would  always 
prevent  any  favourable  turn   of  my  fortune.     It 
was,  however,  impossible  to  draw  back.     I  could 
not  disown  all  the  steps  I  had  taken  to  belong  to 
Madame  du  Maine's  household,  and  I  could  not 
insist  on  any  conditions  as  to  my  position.     I  had 
to  bend  my  neck  under  the  yoke.     I  arrived  at 
Sceaux   in  obedience  to    Madame   de  la  Ferte's 
orders  ;  she  led  me  in  triumph  to  the  Duchesse, 
who  hardly  deigned  to  throw  a  glance  at  me,  and 
then  she  continued  to  drag  me  round,  chained  to 
her  chariot,  to  all  the  people  to  whom  I  was  to  be 
presented ;  I  followed  her  with  the  countenance  of 
a  vanquished  captive.     When  this  ceremonial  had 
at  last  come  to  an  end,  she  told  me  that  now  I 
had  no  more  need  of  her,  and  that  henceforth  she 
would  have  nothing  more  to  do  with  me." 


CHAPTER   VI 

GREAT    TRIALS    AND    SMALL    TRIUMPHS 

EVEN  in  the  half-dazed  state  in  which  Madame 
de  la  Ferte's  departure  left  her,  Mademoiselle 
Delaunay's  heart  must  have  sunk  within  her  when 
she  saw  the  wretched  quarters  allotted  to  her.  In 
her  most  pessimistic  moods  she  could  never  have 
imagined  herself  in  such  a  hovel.  It  was  so  low 
that  one  had  to  bend  one's  neck  in  order  to  save 
one's  head,  and  its  darkness  would  have  satisfied 
the  darkest  conspirators.  The  outer  air  hardly 
penetrated  into  it,  and  there  were  no  means  of 
heating  it  in  cold  weather.  Moreover,  this  com- 
modious residence  was  to  be  at  her  exclusive 
disposal  for  the  night  only,  the  rest  of  the  time 
she  shared  it  with  one  of  Madame  du  Maine's 
women  who  did  night  duty,  and  who  resorted  to 
the  entresol  in  the  day  time,  either  to  sleep  or 
to  play  cards  and  quarrel  noisily  with  her  husband. 
No  other  refuge  remained  then  to  the  unwilling 
witness  of  these  scenes  except  the  distant  alleys 
of  the  park,  and  when  the  rain  or  the  cold  drove 

her  indoors  she  tried  to  get  a  little  warmth  by 

67 


68     GREAT  TRIALS  AND  SMALL  TRIUMPHS 

walking  up  and  down  the  half  open  galleries  which 
ran  round  the  castle. 

In  the  first  days  of  her  "  servitude "  she  had 
hazarded  some  objections  to  Monsieur  de  Malezieu, 
but  "  her  very  humble  servant "  had  forgotten  all 
his  former  protestations  of  devotion;  he  hardly 
listened  to  her,  and  she  did  not  expose  herself 
a  second  time  to  his  disdain,  nor  to  that  of  so 
many  others  who  possessed  in  an  equal  degree 
the  convenient  talent  of  opportune  forgetfulness. 

She  schooled  herself  to  indifference,  or  at 
least  to  a  semblance  of  it,  and  as  an  aspirant  to 
stoicism,  she  certainly  had  excellent  opportunities 
for  a  thorough  apprenticeship.  She  soon  dis- 
covered that  an  absence  of  fireplaces  and  the 
presence  of  one  woman  to  share  an  apartment 
might  be  indescribable  boons;  for  at  the  abode 
of  the  Duchesse  du  Maine  in  Versailles  her  rooms 
were  always  full  of  stifling  smoke,  and  she  had 
two  colleagues  to  share  them  night  and  day. 
"Never  had  the  smallest  ray  of  light  penetrated 
into  them,"  she  moans ;  "  besides,  the  want  of 
space  made  it  necessary  to  quarrel  incessantly  in 
order  to  hold  your  ground,  whilst  the  smoke 
made  you  abandon  it  the  moment  after.  My 
two  room  mates  were  on  bad  terms  with  each 
other,  and  it  was  impossible  to  conciliate  one, 
without  alienating  the  other." 

The    unfortunate    girl,    accustomed     to    the 


FRICTION  69 

niceties  of  speech  and  mind  of  cultivated  people, 
felt  that  there  could  exist  no  system  by  which 
one  might  gauge  the  inscrutable  workings  of 
a  servant's  mind.  "  I  should  have  liked  to  con- 
ciliate all,  but  even  the  cleverest  politician  would 
have  failed,"  she  exclaims  in  her  despair.  "One 
might  gain  some  influence  over  people  with  sane 
views,  familiar  interests,  ordinary  passions,  but  not 
over  those  creatures  whose  ideas  are  topsy-turvy, 
whose  reasonings  defy  reason  and  whose  interests 
grovel  in  the  dust." 

She  offended  mortally  the  susceptibilities  of 
the  high  and  mighty  corps  of  the  waiting- women  ; 
it  was  inevitable,  but  none  the  less  dangerous, 
for  the  stability  of  her  position.  Her  sister, 
having  heard  of  the  difficulties,  implored  her  to 
mend  matters.  "  What  am  I  to  do  ? "  enquired 
the  culprit,  with  the  docility  born  of  utter  dis- 
couragement. The  remedy  suggested  seemed 
simple  enough — pay  a  few  calls  on  the  divers 
waiting-women  belonging  to  the  house  guests, 
and  soothe  their  ruffled  feelings  with  compliments 
and  advances.  Circumstances  happened  to  be 
favourable,  a  great  number  of  these  "ladies," 
being  off  duty,  were  just  then  assembled  in  the 
common  garde-robe,  playing  cards  and  gossiping. 

The  women  of  the  Duchesse  d'Anjou  were 
approached  first,  as  the  highest  in  the  land ; 
though  they  were  not  the  rose,  they  lived  nearest 

E2 


70     GREAT  TRIALS  AND  SMALL  TRIUMPHS 

the  rose,  some  of  its  fragrance  might  cling  to 
them  and  make  them  a  connecting  link  between 
two  hostile  species.  Alas  for  the  disastrous  results  ! 
They  asked  Mademoiselle  Delaunay  how  much 
profit  she  derived  from  this,  how  much  from  that, 
and  as  she  appeared  totally  ignorant  on  these 
important  points,  they  turned  their  backs  with 
contempt  upon  a  person  so  evidently  weak- 
minded  and  resourceless.  The  next  move  was 
not  much  happier ;  the  determined  peace-maker 
seized  upon  the  first  individual  who  hove  in 
sight,  and  poured  upon  her  all  the  praise  with 
which  she  had  formerly  intended  to  win  the 
whole  corps ;  her  shortsightedness  had  played 
her  a  trick,  she  had  hit  upon  the  last  person  to 
deserve  her  laudations,  and  it  was  so  generally 
evident  that  a  loud  burst  of  laughter  greeted 
her  unlucky  efforts ! 

Incongruously  enough  she  seemed  doomed 
to  appear  stupid  in  a  position  which  was  in 
reality  much  below  her  mental  capacities.  Partly 
from  timidity  and  inexperience,  partly  owing  to 
her  bad  sight,  she  committed  incredible  blunders, 
some  of  which  she  describes  in  her  Memoirs, 
when  she  dwells  on  past  miseries. 

"  When  I  entered  upon  the  duties  of  my  office," 
she  relates,  "  I  was  given  as  my  first  task  some 
chemises  to  cut  out.  I  felt  greatly  puzzled,  for 
I  had  never  done  any  needlework,  except  the 


DRESSING-ROOM  TROUBLES  71 

useless  fancy  work  with  which  one  whiles  away 
one's  time  in  convents.  I  spent  a  whole  day  in 
taking  measurements  and  in  trying  to  carry 
out  this  great  enterprise ;  .  .  .  but,  when  Madame 
du  Maine  put  on  her  chemise  she  found  at  the 
wrist  the  part  which  ought  to  have  been  at  the 
elbow  ! " 

Luckily  for  her  inexperienced  waiting-woman 
Madame  du  Maine's  petulance  was  not  wasted 
on  the  fit  of  her  chemises. 

"  She  asked  who  had  performed  this  beautiful 
feat,  and  on  being  informed  of  it  she  said  quite 
undisturbed  that  I  evidently  did  not  know  how 
to  sew,  and  that  henceforth  this  work  would  have 
to  be  allotted  to  some  one  else." 

The  Duchesse  had  need  of  an  unruffled  dis- 
position, in  order  to  put  up  with  Mademoiselle 
Delaunay's  gaucheries.  The  first  time  she  asked 
for  some  water,  her  new  waiting-woman  poured 
it  over  one  of  her  most  delicate  court  dresses, 
and  the  unlucky  girl  could  never  find  anything 
she  was  ordered  to  fetch. 

"One  day,"  she  says,  "the  Duchesse  told  me 
to  bring  her  some  rouge  and  a  little  cup  of 
water  from  her  dressing-table.  I  went  into  her 
room,  where  I  remained  bewildered,  not  knowing 
in  which  direction  to  turn.  The  Princesse  de 
Guise  happened  to  be  passing  through,  and 
astonished  to  see  me  in  this  state  of  confusion, 


72     GREAT  TRIALS  AND  SMALL  TRIUMPHS 

6  What  are  you  doing  here  ? '  she  asked.  '  Eh, 
Madame/  I  replied,  *  a  cup,  some  rouge,  a  dressing- 
table,  I  can  see  nothing  of  all  these/  Touched  by 
my  despair,  she  put  into  my  hands  what  I  would 
have  looked  for  in  vain,  without  her  help.  Another 
day,  Madame  la  Duchesse  du  Maine,  being  at  her 
dressing-table,  asked  me  for  some  powder.  I  took 
the  box  by  the  lid  ;  it  dropped  open,  as  it  naturally 
would,  and  all  the  powder  fell  on  the  dress  of 
the  Princess,  who  said  quietly :  '  When  you  take 
up  a  thing  you  should  hold  it  at  the  bottom.1  I 
remembered  this  lesson  so  well  that  several  days 
after,  when  the  Duchesse  asked  me  for  her  purse, 
I  took  it  up  by  the  bottom  part,  and  was  most 
astonished  to  see  its  contents,  a  hundred  louis  or 
so,  scattered  on  the  floor." 

What  we  seem  to  be  has  a  curious  power  of 
making  us  into  what  we  are,  or  what  we  think 
we  are  for  the  time  being,  and  we  grope  in  vain 
after  our  personality  when  untoward  circumstances 
have  distorted  it  beyond  the  power  of  even  our 
own  recognition.  For  a  time,  at  least,  Mademoiselle 
Delaunay  felt  mentally  annihilated,  and  if  she  ever 
read  over  again  the  letter  which  the  Marquis  de 
Silly  had  written  to  her  when  she  entered  Madame 
du  Maine's  household,  some  parts  of  it  must  have 
seemed  to  her  the  very  bitterest  irony. 

"  Do  not,"  wrote  this  cautious  adviser,  "  reveal 
more  of  your  wit  than  is  adapted  to  the  needs  of 


THE   DONKEY'S  KICK  73 

those  to  whom  you  are  speaking.  Be  satisfied 
with  showing  wisdom  and  pleasant  accomplish- 
ments. They  are  far  more  appreciated  than  wit ; 
which  is  apt  to  be  feared." 


The  recipient  of  this  good  advice  had  come  to 
feel  very  safe  from  the  complications  incumbent  on 
superior  qualities  of  the  mind.  Had  not  an  old 
cure  strengthened  her  in  this  peculiar  security  by 
asking  her,  as  she  was  standing  sponsor  to  a 
child,  if  she  would  be  capable  of  signing  her 
name  in  the  parish  register !  "  This  was  truly," 
she  remarks,  "the  donkey's  kick." 

To  make  matters  worse,  she  was  soon  to  find 
out  that  her  position,  however  lowly,  was  not  out 
of  the  reach  of  intrigues.  One  of  Madame  du 
Maine's  ladies-in-waiting,  whose  chief  occupation 
was  to  play  the  part  of  the  classical  confidente  on 
the  Sceaux  theatre,  took  pity  on  Mademoiselle 
Delaunay's  disconsolate  wanderings  in  the  park, 
and  offered  her  the  use  of  her  rooms.  At 
Versailles,  shortly  after,  she  asked  her  to  repay 
her  favours  by  allowing  her  the  use  of  the  entresol, 
if  she  should  happen  to  need  it.  Puzzled  at  the 
thought  that  her  very  unenviable  quarters  could 
be  wanted,  but  feeling  under  an  obligation,  she 
acceded  to  the  request.  Unluckily  the  lady  in 
question  put  the  said  entresol  to  an  injudicious 
use,  the  nature  of  which  brought  down  upon  her 


74     GREAT  TRIALS  AND  SMALL  TRIUMPHS 

the  righteous  wrath  of  her  lord  and  master.  A 
scandal  ensued,  in  which  Mademoiselle  Delaunay's 
name  was  mixed  up ;  and  this  circumstance 
wounded  to  the  quick  the  delicate  sensibilities  of 
the  waiting- women's  corps !  Mademoiselle  Manette, 
chosen  as  spokeswoman,  was  sent  to  express  the 
general  feeling.  "This  adventure,"  she  said, 
"is  very  unpleasant  for  all  of  us,  people  are 
speaking  of  one  of  Madame  du  Maine's  women, 
and  Ion  se  voit  confondue."  "Je  me  trouvais 
moi-mtme"  remarks  the  victim,  "si  confondue  de 
vivre  avec  elle,  que  je  rfaurais  jamais  pense  que 
ce  malheur  dut  la  regarder" 

From  her  utter  weariness,  humiliation,  and 
despair,  Mademoiselle  Delaunay  saw  but  one 
escape  —  death,  and  she  resolved  to  force  open 
its  gates.  Before  she  put  an  end  to  her  life, 
however,  she  would  allow  her  cramped  soul  one 
moment  of  blissful  expansion,  she  would  strip  her 
heart  naked  and  revel  in  its  nakedness,  she  would 
write  to  Monsieur  de  Silly  all  that  she  had  never 
dared  to  say  to  him.  The  letter  was  written,  but 
was  never  sent.  "Having  yielded  so  far  to  my 
madness,"  says  its  writer,  "  I  felt  my  reason  return 
to  me  and  resolved  to  live."  She  kept  the  letter 
"as  a  warning"  against  herself,  and  as  a  proof  of 
"  the  excesses  into  which  one  falls  when  one  gives 
way  to  one's  passions."  A  letter  dictated  by 
passion  and  confiscated  by  reason  has  seldom 


A  MOVING  LETTER  75 

escaped  the  flames — the  exceptional  fate  of  this 
one  makes  it  worthy  of  being  quoted: 

"  Five  years  ago  I  saw  you  for  the  first  time. 
You  treated  me  with  an  indifference  which  seemed 
to  border  on  contempt.  Irritated  against  you, 
I  sought  to  discover  faults  in  you,  and  only 
discovered  charms  and  virtues.  I  wished  to  hate 
you,  and  I  loved  you  ;  then  my  sole  endeavour 
was  to  hide  from  you  feelings  which  I  well  believed 
could  not  be  reciprocated.  And  yet  I  could  not 
bear  that  your  insensibility  should  keep  you 
ignorant  of  them.  The  slightest  attentions  from 
you  touched  me  very  deeply,  and  so  ardently 
did  I  wish  to  be  indebted  to  you  that  I  found 
reasons  for  my  gratitude  even  in  your  coldness. 
I  looked  upon  it  as  a  laudable  effort  to  tear  out 
of  my  heart  hopes  which  would  prove  vain  and 
dangerous.  You  might  even  have  treated  me 
with  harshness,  without  any  other  consequence 
than  the  increase  of  the  esteem  in  which  I  held 
you,  an  esteem  so  perfect  and  so  respectful  that 
it  even  made  me  condemn  to  myself  the  desire 
to  please  you  without,  however,  robbing  me  of 
it.  Neither  a  long  absence,  nor  the  changes  in 
my  fortune,  nor  the  efforts  of  experienced  reason- 
ing have  prevailed  upon  me  to  make  me  forget. 
I  went  further  in  my  endeavours,  I  wished  to 
see,  and  I  saw  those  who  were  reputed  most 
worthy  of  being  loved.  How  different  from  you 
they  seemed  to  me!  No  one  resembles  you  and 
nothing  resembles  the  feeling  which  I  have  for 
you.  I  cannot  accustom  myself  to  seeing  people 


76    GREAT  TRIALS  AND  SMALL  TRIUMPHS 

in  love  with  each  other,  and  I  do  not  understand 
that  one  could  love  any  one  but  you.  What  are 
you  thinking  at  the  present  moment  of  the  con- 
fession which  I  am  making  to  you?  As  to  me, 
I  feel  no  shame  for  it,  and  a  feeling  such  as 
mine  commands  respect.  I  am  not  endeavouring 
to  touch  you.  I  only  wanted  to  make  known  to 
you  what  I  feel,  and  my  resolution  to  put  an 
end  to  my  unhappiness.  I  feel  too  deeply  that 
I  belong  to  you,  to  think  of  disposing  of  myself 
without  giving  you  an  account  of  my  decision. 
I  await  one  word  from  you,  and  it  is  the  only 
thing  I  shall  await  before  bidding  you  adieu  for 


ever." 


Just  about  that  time  one  of  those  "civic" 
agitations  which  sometimes  convulsed  the  little 
court  of  Sceaux,  occurred  very  opportunely  to 
rescue  Mademoiselle  Delaunay  from  her  state  of 
despondency.  From  the  secluded  vantage  ground 
of  her  entresol,  unsuspected  by  any  one,  she  took 
her  humorous  share  in  the  agitation.  It  was  due 
this  time  to  one  of  the  Duchesse  du  Maine's 
ingenious  institutions  for  the  pursuit  of  intellectual 
pleasure.  On  one  of  her  most  creative  days  she 
had  founded  the  Order  of  the  "  Mouche-a-miel," 
or  "  Order  of  the  Bee."  of  which  she  was  naturally 
the  grande-maitresse.  Its  motto,  "  Piccola  si,  ma 
fa  pur  gravi  le  ferite,"  was  an  allusion  to  her 
stature  and  a  retort  to  the  taunts  of  her  dis- 
agreeable sister-in-law,  the  former  Mademoiselle 


ORDER  OF  THE   BEE  77 

de  Nantes.  The  order  had  its  own  statutes ;  and 
its  limited  number  of  members  could  be  elected 
from  either  sex.  Its  ceremonies  were  conducted 
with  the  utmost  gravity,  and  no  Chevalier  du 
Saint  Esprit  could  have  received  his  grand  cordon 
from  the  hands  of  the  king  with  greater  awe 
than  did  the  chevaliers  and  the  chevalieres  de  la 
Mouche-a-miel  fasten  on  their  shoulder  the  little 
golden  bee,  which  was  the  emblem  of  their  dignity. 
On  bended  knee  they  took  the  oath  which  savoured 
strongly  of  Malezieu's  pomposity,  and  in  which 
they  swore  "  by  all  the  bees  of  Mount  Hymettus  " 
to  be  loyal  to  their  queen,  and  asked  that  in  case 
of  defection  their  miel  might  be  turned  into  fid, 
and  that  other  laboriously  thought  out  jeux  de 
mots  might  be  turned  into  serious  realities, 
expressly  for  their  chastisement. 

The  election  of  a  new  member  was  to  take 
place  a  few  months  after  Mademoiselle  Delaunay's 
arrival,  and  the  whole  court  was  in  a  flutter  of 
excitement.  Among  a  great  number  of  candi- 
dates, the  most  eligible,  it  seems,  were  the 
Comtesse  de  Brassac,  the  Comtesse  d'Uz£s,  and  the 
President  de  Romanet.  Whether  the  grande- 
maitresse  was  influenced  by  the  latter's  dignity 
or  by  his  sex,  is  a  debatable  point ;  at  any  rate 
he  gained  the  victory  over  his  two  feminine 
rivals.  They  owed  it  to  themselves  and  to  their 
sex  to  recriminate,  and  the  whole  of  Sceaux  was 


78     GREAT  TRIALS  AND  SMALL  TRIUMPHS 

formed  into  two  hostile  camps  bandying  at  each 
other  accusations  of  unfair  dealings  and  illegal 
procedure. 

Mademoiselle  Delaunay,  in  her  entresol,  with 
plenty  of  leisure  for  mental  gymnastics,  gathered 
up  these  complaints  which  were  rending  the  very 
air,  and  amused  herself  by  writing  them  up  in 
legal  style,  giving  free  play  to  the  tone  of 
chicanery  with  which  Madame  de  Grieu's  legal 
difficulties  had  made  her  familiar.  She  even 
went  so  far  as  to  send  them  in  the  form  of  a 
petition,  and  in  the  defendants'  name,  to  the 
President  de  Romanet.  This  composition,  small 
as  may  seem  its  chances  of  providing  entertain- 
ment, engrossed  Sceaux  for  the  better  part  of 
two  weeks.  Monsieur  de  Malezieu,  in  his  quality 
of  first  wit,  was  the  first  to  be  charged  with  the 
authorship;  he  regretfully  denied  it,  and  the 
accusation  went  on  from  greater  to  lesser  until 
it  fell  upon  the  most  witless.  "But  no  one," 
sighs  Mademoiselle  Delaunay,  "ever  thought  of 
me  as  the  author!"  She  had  to  comfort  herself 
with  the  silent  enjoyment  of  the  fruitless  search, 
and  by  composing  thereupon  a  few  verses  which 
nobody  ever  read,  until  she  put  them  in  her 
Memoirs. 

Her  next  interference  with  public  affairs  met 
with  more  success,  and  she  owed  it  to  the 
famous  Monsieur  de  Fontenelle  and  the  obscure 


A  DEMI-GOD'S  SUBJUGATION  79 

Mademoiselle  Tetar.  This  damsel  proclaimed 
that  she  had  been  chosen  by  the  powers  above 
as  an  instrument  for  occult  demonstrations.  All 
Paris  went  to  see  her,  and  Monsieur  de  Fontenelle 
went  too,  not  from  mere  curiosity,  like  the 
common  herd,  but  as  a  champion  of  the  reliability 
of  Nature's  character,  and  in  order  to  expose  these 
alleged  insults  to  the  immutability  of  her  laws. 
His  investigations  lasted  longer  than  would  have 
been  deemed  necessary,  and  were  inspired,  so 
it  was  rumoured,  less  by  an  interest  in  science 
than  by  a  quite  unscientific  infatuation  with 
Mademoiselle  Tetar 's  natural  charms.  Great  was 
the  merriment  over  the  demi-god's  subjugation, 
and  even  his  Olympian  calm  was  at  length  stung 
into  retaliation,  so  numerous  were  the  merciless 
gibes  thrown  at  him. 

In  the  midst  of  the  battle  of  words  and  jeers 
which  ensued,  Mademoiselle  Delaunay,  who  was 
always  staunch  in  her  friendships,  wrote  to 
Monsieur  de  Fontenelle  a  letter  assuring  him  of 
her  partisanship  and  laughing  at  his  detractors. 

This  letter  was  not  particularly  witty,  one 
would  now  consign  it  to  the  waste-paper  basket 
without  a  regret,  even  if  one  were  the  author  of 
it,  but  in  that  golden  age,  when  intellect  was  at 
such  a  premium,  it  met  with  a  wonderful  fate. 
Fontenelle,  being  one  day  at  the  Marquis  de 
Lassays,  and  finding  himself  again  a  butt  to  the 


80     GREAT  TRIALS   AND  SMALL  TRIUMPHS 

usual  pleasantries,  drew  his  letter  out  of  his 
pocket  and  showed  it  all  round,  saying:  "This 
contains  better  pleasantries."  It  was  read  by 
all  who  were  present,  it  was  copied  and  circulated 
at  large.  "  All  the  Germans  here,"  wrote  Monsieur 
de  Silly  from  Friburg  later  on,  "  wish  to  have  a 
copy  of  it." 

The  Duchesse  du  Maine  was  one  of  the  last 
to  ask  for  the  wonderful  letter,  and  discovering 
that  all  who  were  present  at  Sceaux  had  a  copy 
of  it  in  their  pocket,  she  began  to  realise  the 
glory  emanating  from  her  household.  "  She  read 
the  letter,"  reports  Mademoiselle  Delaunay, 
u  approved  of  it,  and  understood  that  she  could 
derive  greater  profit  from  me  than  she  had 
done  so  far.  I  myself  began  to  wish,  like  all 
the  others,  to  possess  a  copy  of  my  letter  and  to 
think  highly  of  it." 


CHAPTER  VII 

SLAVES  OF  PLEASURE  AT  SCEAUX 

THE  T^tar  episode  had  done  a  great  deal  towards 
Mademoiselle  Delaunay's  advancement.  Now  her 
Serene  Highness  did  condescend  sometimes  to  hold 
some  real  conversation  with  her,  she  seemed  to 
appreciate  her  mind,  and  even  allowed  her 
occasionally  to  be  present  at  the  discussions  of 
the  wits  of  Sceaux.  Henceforth  Mademoiselle 
Delaunay  was  not  quite  a  waiting-woman,  but 
she  was  nothing  else  yet,  and  woe  to  her  if  she 
presumed  to  cross  the  boundary  lines.  It  was 
just  then  that  every  evening  in  the  Duchesse's 
boudoir,  the  Latin  poem,  The  Anti-Lucretia, 
used  to  be  read  and  discussed  before  a  fluttering, 
chiefly  feminine,  audience,  by  its  exquisite 
but  rather  malicious  author,  the  Cardinal  de 
Polignac.  The  lonely  tenant  of  the  dark  entresol 
hungered  for  intellectual  pastures,  and  she  dared 
to  beg  for  admittance.  The  very  genius  of  pride 
and  vainglory  must  have  been  at  work  in  her 
mind,  when  she  had  thus  presumed  to  ignore 

proper  distances ;   she  realised    it   too    late    alas, 

81  F 


82        SLAVES  OF  PLEASURE  AT  SCEAUX 

when  a  crushing  and  peremptory  refusal  brought 
her  to  her  senses! 

To  balance  small  failures,  however,  there  were 
small  successes:  the  number  of  her  friends  in- 
creased steadily,  and  it  happened  more  and  more 
frequently  that  some  of  them  found  their  way 
to  her  entresol ;  "  though,"  she  said,  "  it  was  a 
difficult  matter  to  discover  me  under  the  stairs 
where  I  made  my  residence."  To  her  came  one 
day  the  Abbe  de  Vaubrun,  one  of  those  petits 
collets  permanently  attached  to  the  court  of 
Sceaux.  He  was  full  of  a  new  plan  for  a  totally 
novel  divertissement,  very  elated  at  his  ideas  too, 
and  his  elation  was  pardonable  indeed,  for  it 
must  have  needed  a  prodigious  inventiveness  to 
think  of  something  new  in  the  face  of  the  endless 
succession  of  fetes,  ballets,  and  masquerades 
through  the  medium  of  which  mythology,  history, 
and  allegory  paid  their  homage  to  the  queen  of 
Sceaux.  One  cannot  help  thinking  that  there 
must  have  been  an  element  of  satiety  in  the  fact 
that  the  denoument  of  these  elaborately  con- 
structed intrigues  could  always  be  apprehended 
with  absolute  certainty.  Was  it  not  irksome  to 
the  Divinity  of  Sceaux  to  know,  without  any 
possibility  of  doubt,  that  the  treasures  for  which 
Merlin  and  a  procession  of  lesser  magicians  were 
searching  so  diligently,  would  inevitably  prove 
to  be  the  treasures  of  her  own  incomparable 
mind,  and  that  the  lost  girdle  of  Venus  would 


NIGHT  AND   DETESTABLE   SLEEP  83 

naturally  be  discovered  encircling  her  own  waist. 
But  no,  she  never  wearied  of  these  flatteries, 
was  she  not  the  Divinity  of  Sceaux,  and  do  not 
the  gods  drink  nectar  for  ever,  with  ever-smiling 
serenity  ? 

The  Abbe's  original  idea  was  not  quite  as 
original  as  he  thought ;  it  needed,  as  usual,  the 
help  of  allegorical  figures  for  its  interpretation ; 
but  its  novelty  lay  in  the  prdposal  to  exploit  the 
Duchesse's  peculiar  partiality  for  the  night,  as 
opposed  to  the  day,  and  in  the  suggestion  to 
make  that  the  keynote  of  the  whole.  Night  was 
looked  upon  with  great  disfavour  at  Sceaux,  and 
sleep  stood  in  utter  disrepute. 

"  Detestable  sleep  !  "  exclaim  some  verses 
dedicated  to  the  Duchesse,  "leave  our  enchanted 
fields,  and  go  to  feed  the  laziness  of  the  monks. 
Go  to  fatten  sluggish  canons,  and  to  instil  into 
their  numb  senses  the  elixir  of  thy  poppies. 
These  dullards  think  to  lengthen  their  life  by 
the  means  of  sleep,  but  they  are  dead  already, 
and  sleep  has  performed  upon  them  the  offices 
of  Atropos ! " 

This  was  very  well  for  the  Duchesse,  who  seems 
to  have  really  been  immune  from  most  frailties 
of  the  flesh ;  but  the  strongest  courtier's  instinct 
must  have  been  needed  in  others,  to  keep  up 
nodding  heads,  to  keep  clear  the  weary  eyes 
clouding  over  with  sleep.  There  is  no  miracle 
that  is  impossible,  however,  to  the  true  monarchic 


84        SLAVES  OF  PLEASURE  AT  SCEAUX 

feeling,  and  night  after  night  the  subjects  stayed 
awake  with  their  queen;  they  professed  to  share 
her  horror  for  the  garish  light  of  day,  and  here 
was  a  self-sacrificing  courtier  actually  ready  with 
suggestions  for  further  night  revels !  His  idea 
was  to  make  Night  appear  as  an  allegorical  figure, 
in  order  to  thank  Madame  du  Maine  in  well- 
polished  verses,  of  course,  for  the  preference 
accorded  to  her.  Noblesse  oblige  ....  there 
would  henceforth  be  less  sleep  than  ever !  As 
the  Abbe's  strong  point  was  not  the  making 
of  verses,  he  asked  Mademoiselle  Delaunay  to 
compose  the  harangue  of  Night,  adding  gallantly 
that  she  would  also  be  the  one  most  capable  of 
delivering  it.  She  acceded  to  his  request,  and 
this  was  the  beginning  of  the  famous  Grandes 
Nuits  de  Sceaux  —  a  harassing  series  of  night- 
entertainments,  applauded  by  many,  cursed 
perhaps  by  not  a  few  in  the  safe  sanctum  of 
their  inner  privacy. 

"The  only  merit  of  the  first  performance," 
says  its  modest  author,  "  was  its  element  of 
unexpectedness.  I  executed  it  very  badly,  for 
I  was  seized  with  terror  at  the  idea  of  speaking 
in  public,  and  remembered  only  very  insufficiently 
what  I  had  to  say  1 " 

In  spite  of  this,  she  was  asked  several  times 
again  to  recite  and  even  to  sing,  until  it  was 
proved  that  her  stage  fright  was  incurable  ;  then 


LITERARY  LOTTERIES  85 

she  was  allowed  to  retire,  and  was  granted  as  a 
compensation  the  dignity  of  an  advising  member 
to  the  committee  for  the  planning  of  the  Grandes 
Nuits. 

It  was  no  doubt  a  great  honour,  and  not  a 
sinecure ;  none  knew  it  better  than  the  unfortunate 
Monsieur  de  Malezieu,  President  of  the  Committee, 
and  reponsible  for  all  its  vagaries — reponsible  also, 
alas !  for  any  absence  of  novel  ideas.  The  stress 
of  circumstances  made  him  at  last  turn  to  Fate  for 
help,  and  he  instituted  the  so-called,  "literary 
lotteries"  which  must  have  daunted  the  most 
dauntless.  The  letters  of  the  alphabet  were  put 
in  a  bag,  into  which  all  the  members  of  the 
committee  had  to  dip,  and  to  draw  out,  each  in 
turn,  the  fateful  letter  from  which  there  was  no 
escape.  "  S  "  stood  for  a  sonnet — it  was  a  favourite 
letter,  and  probably  elusive  in  consequence  ;  "  F  " 
meant  a  fable ;  "  C  "  demanded  a  comedy  ;  alas 
for  the  serious-minded  who  drew  it  1  "  O "  was 
the  most  formidable.  He  whose  unlucky  hand  fell 
upon  "  O  "  had  to  produce  a  whole  operetta  unless 
he  could  attune  his  mind  to  the  lofty  strains  of  an 
ode — in  which  case  his  levity  was  excused  in  favour 
of  the  nobler  sentiment.  The  last  of  the  Grandes 
Nuits  was  composed  entirely  by  Mademoiselle 
Delaunay,  and  she  was  publicly  proclaimed  the 
author  of  it.  It  was  a  great  success,  and  could 
hardly  have  failed  to  entrance  the  spectators,  so 

F2 


86    SLAVES  OF  PLEASURE  AT  SCEAUX 

deftly  had  she  mixed  into  it  the  ingredients  which 
make  that  special  incense  which  is  peculiarly  agree- 
able to  the  nostrils  of  gods  and  semi-gods. 

The  main  thread,  connecting  more  or  less  success- 
fully the  various  incidents,  was  the  idea  that  "  good 
taste  "  had  found  a  refuge  in  Sceaux,  had  selected 
it  as  a  permanent  residence,  and  was  the  presiding 
genius  over  all  Madame  du  Maine's  actions.  The 
author's  own  account  of  her  production,  as  it  appears 
in  her  Memoirs,  is  not  entrancing,  and  it  is  a  relief 
to  get  to  the  end  of  her  description :  "  At  last 
the  Genii  of  Laughter  appear  and  erect  a  stage 
for  the  performance  of  a  comedy  in  one  act,  the 
grand  finale  of  the  whole."  The  theme  of  this 
play  was  one  of  the  Duchesse's  latest  intellectual 
passions :  the  search  for  the  "  magic  square,"  a 
pursuit  which  had  kept  Sceaux  in  breathless 
suspense  for  several  weeks,  and  specially  harassed 
poor  Monsieur  de  Malezieu,  who  was  occasionally 
obliged  to  pay  dearly  for  his  title  of  "Euclid  of 
Sceaux."  The  success  of  the  comedy,  whatever 
its  merits  or  demerits  may  have  been,  was  assured 
by  the  fact  that  Madame  du  Maine  herself  was  to 
act  the  chief  part  in  it — a  circumstance  which  made 
it  appear  perfect  to  all  eyes,  her  own  included. 

It  was  a  great  occasion  for  Mademoiselle 
Delaunay,  and  was  marked  by  the  bestowal  upon 
her  of  a  very  special  favour — a  miniature  portrait 
of  the  Duchesse  represented  as  Hebe.  As  a  likeness, 


A  FINANCIAL  CHECK  87 

it  may  have  been  indifferent,  but  it  was  received 
with  transports  of  delights  which  were  duly 
modelled  into  enthusiastic  verses.  The  Duchesse 
answered  these  delirious  protestations  with  four 
lines,  which  sound  refreshingly  simple. 

"  Vous  me  payez  avec  usure, 
Launay,  d'un  mediocre  don, 
L' original  et  la  peinture 
Ne  valent  pas  votre  chanson." 

The  enormous  expenses  entailed  by  these  gorgeous 
night  entertainments  made  it  at  last  necessary  to 
interrupt  them;  had  it  not  been  for  this  prosaic 
but  merciful  circumstance,  the  court  of  Sceaux 
might  have  perished  from  exhaustion,  without  even 
risking  a  stifled  yawn!  But  alas!  the  load  had 
only  been  shifted  ;  the  Duchesse  having  retrenched, 
now  went  to  the  other  extreme,  henceforth  only 
the  pure  treasures  of  the  mind  were  to  be  expended 
on  pleasure,  and  this  called  for  the  most  strenuous 
mental  efforts.  One  dined  and  supped  and  lived 
on  "  quatrains  "  and  "  sextains  "  anagrams,  epigrams, 
and  enigmas.  Some  happy  minds  would  at  times 
produce  quite  tolerably  pretty  lines  ;  Saint  Aulaire, 
for  instance,  when  he  gently  railed  at  the  Duchesse 
for  her  excessive  interest  in  philosophy. 

"  Bergere,  detachons-nous 
De  Newton,  de  Descartes, 
Ces  deux  especes  de  fous 
N'ont  jamais  vu  le  dessous 
Des  cartes." 


88         SLAVES   OF   PLEASURE   AT  SCEAUX 

Fontenelle,  too,  was  occasionally  quite  felicitous. 
It  was  he  who  at  one  of  the  Sceaux  suppers 
made,  to  a  riddle  proposed,  the  happy  answer 
which  has  become  classical :  "  What  is,"  some 
one  asked,  "  the  difference  between  a  clock  and 
the  mistress  of  the  house  ? "  "  The  one  records  the 
hours,  the  other  makes  you  forget  them," 
answered  quickly  the  gallant  Fontenelle. 

On  the  other  hand,  it  is  hardly  to  be 
wondered  at  that  sometimes  the  Muse  refused 
to  be  coaxed,  and  that  De  Malezieu  being  one 
day  called  upon  to  "versify"  could  find  nothing 
but  these  lame  and  pathetic  three  lines : 

"  Lorsque  Minerve  nous  ordonne, 
On  a  toujours  assez  d'esprit ; 
Si  Ton  n'en  a  pas,  elle  en  donne." 

Alas!  even  Minerva's  wit  ran  short  sometimes, 
as  is  sufficiently  proved  by  her  anagram  on  the 
Abbe  Charles  Genest,  who  shared  with  the  im- 
mortal Cyrano  the  inconvenience  of  having  too 
large  a  nose.  The  Duchesse  was  lost  in  deep 
thought  for  a  while,  considering  with  knitted 
brows  the  letters  which  made  up  the  Abbe's 
name,  then  suddenly  clapping  her  hands,  she 
exclaimed  triumphantly,  "Eh,  cest  large  nez!" 

This  brilliant  anagram  is  preserved  in  the 
Divertissements  de  Sceaux  with  other  gems  of 
its  kind.  Even  Mademoiselle  Delaunay  quotes 
from  them  with  complacency  sayings  which 


A  RELEGATED  DUKE  89 

would     have     made     her     yawn     in     any    other 
atmosphere ;  but  sublimity  is  a  powerful  narcotic 
to    common-sense.       The    Due    du    Maine    was 
the    only    one    at    Sceaux    who    was    excluded 
from  intellectual   divertissements.     The   Duchesse 
had    recognised    from    the    first    her    husband's 
peculiar  talents,   and   had   allotted  him   his  part 
accordingly.     For    him     the     patient    toil,     the 
cunning   machinations,    the    persevering    cringing 
by  which  credit  and  influence  are  won  at  Court, 
for  her  the  benefits  attained.     He  was  continually 
at   Versailles,   or    in    the   vicinity  of    the   King, 
where    the    true    courtier    must    ever    be    seen, 
and  if  by  chance  he  was  at  Sceaux,  he  was  under 
strict  orders  for  the  use  of  his  time.     While  his 
guests    were    discussing    the    Pluralities    of   the 
Worlds  he  was  relegated  to  one  of  the  pavilions 
at    the    far    end    of    the   park,    and    advised    to 
cultivate  his  talent  for  figures,  or  as  a  relaxation 
was    sometimes    allowed    to    draw    designs    for 
flower-beds    or    new    avenues    in    the    park    of 
Sceaux.      He    submitted    readily    enough,    as    a 
rule,   rebelling   only   in   a  few   cases,   when  pro- 
vocation   proved   too    great.       It  had   happened, 
for  instance,  in  connection  with  the  Anti-Lucrcce. 
In  spite  of  a  literary  reputation  achieved  at  the 
early  age  of  seven,  the  Due  had  been  excluded 
from  the  readings,  and  his  sense  of  justice  was 
sore  within  him.      At  the  far  end  of  the  park  of 


90        SLAVES  OF  PLEASURE   AT  SCEAUX 

Sceaux,  in  his  secluded  tower,  he  meditated  upon 
means  of  retaliation,  and  one  day,  tremulously, 
for  he  understood  his  position,  yet  with  a 
pathetic  eagerness  for  praise,  he  brought  his 
wife  a  French  version  of  the  Anti-Lucrece,  the 
first  part  of  which  he  had  just  completed.  Great 
was  the  Duchesse's  indignation.  "Yes,"  she  said 
to  him  with  fine  scorn,  "you  will  wake  up  one 
day  to  find  yourself  a  member  of  the  Academy ; 
but  the  Due  d'Orleans  will  have  been  appointed 
Regent  of  France ! " 


CHAPTER  VIII 

THE  TRAGIC  END  OF  A  LONG  REIGN 

MEANWHILE  history  was  shaping  itself,  and 
Mademoiselle  Delaunay  was  not  to  be  con- 
demned altogether  to  the  lonely  exclusiveness 
of  Sceaux.  Versailles,  which  once  had  been  the 
object  of  the  Duchesse  du  Maine's  contempt  and 
aversion,  was  rapidly  becoming  a  strong  magnet 
for  her  ambition.  From  the  powerful  though 
still  hidden  drama,  which  centred  round  the 
King's  residence,  emanated  an  atmosphere  which 
drew  her  irresistibly  to  watch  for  coming  events. 
A  catastrophe  was  impending,  inevitable — the 
disintegration  of  the  country,  the  falling  of  the 
old  regime  ?  Who  knew !  and  who  knew  how 
the  spoils  would  be  divided! 

France,  struggling  in  the  throes  of  an  end- 
less fight,  the  war  of  the  Spanish  succession,  was 
vainly  trying  to  solve  an  insoluble  problem  — 
how  to  raise  funds  from  exhausted  sources.  For 
the  first  time  the  King  had  been  known  to  throw 

up  his  hands  publicly,  to  break  down  in  the  very 

91 


92  THE  TRAGIC  END 

presence  of  his  council,  and  to  declare  that  the 
situation  was  hopeless.  Le  "  Hoi  Soleil,"  who  had 
run  his  course  with  such  splendid  ruthlessness, 
was  becoming  human  at  last;  and  there  was 
something  demoralising  in  that  spectacle.  Once 
already,  on  addressing  his  Breton  States  on  the 
subject  of  a  new  tax  voted  unanimously  by 
them,  he  had  surprised  his  audience  by  using 
the  word  "gratitude"  towards  them,  and  he 
himself  had  started  visibly  as  this  unaccustomed 
word  had  fallen  from  his  lips.  Private  financiers, 
gens  de  peu,  as  the  haughty  Saint-Simon  described 
them,  were  admitted  into  the  inner  presence  to 
discuss  with  the  King  himself,  as  man  to  man,  the 
matter  of  loans  and  the  raising  of  funds.  Times 
were  changed  indeed ! 

The  country  had  hardly  recovered  from  the 
terrible  famine  which  had  followed  upon  the  hard 
winter  of  1709.  It  had  been  the  haunting  horror 
of  the  Dauphin's  last  months,  and  he  had  not  dared 
to  show  his  face  in  the  streets  of  Paris,  where 
clamours  for  bread  and  entreaties  surged  round 
him  like  the  waves  of  an  angry  sea.  He  was  dead 
now  —  his  unheroic  soul  had  escaped  from 
threatening  responsibilities,  and  the  King,  an 
enfeebled  old  man,  was  wearily  continuing  the 
struggle. 

In  1710,  just  before  the  death  of  the  Emperor 
of  Austria  had  turned  the  course  of  events  by 
directing  English  apprehensions  towards  Austria's 


PERE  LE  TELLIER. 


7i;  face  p.  92. 


A  ROYAL  REIGN  OF  TERROR  93 

pretensions,  Louis  XIV.,  to  provide  for  the 
gigantic  expenses  of  the  war,  had  declared  a  tax 
of  one-tenth  on  all  income.  This  new  burden  had 
raised  a  storm  of  rebellion,  and  while  the  country 
was  groaning  under  ever-renewed  impositions, 
a  kind  of  reign  of  terror  had  been  inaugurated  in 
the  Church  by  the  coming  into  power  of  Father 
Le  Tellier,  confessor  to  the  King.  He  had 
succeeded  Pere  La  Chaise  in  1710,  and  the  hold 
which  he  had  immediately  obtained  over  the 
King's  mind  had  an  element  of  the  sinister  in 
it.  Totally  devoid  of  conscience,  devoured  by 
ambition,  and  shrinking  from  no  crime,  he  had 
deliberately  set  to  work  to  exile  from  the  Court, 
and  to  oust  from  positions  of  importance  all  those 
who  were  not  ready  to  be  his  willing  tools. 
By  his  system  of  intimidation  and  delation  he 
brought  about  the  downfall  of  much  that  was  still 
honourable  in  the  Church,  and  there  were  priests, 
bishops,  and  even  cardinals,  who  lived  in  daily  fear 
of  the  lettre  de  cachet  which  would  send  them  to 
the  Bastille. 

Madame  de  Maintenon  disapproved,  but  re- 
mained silent ;  the  burden  of  her  life  at  Court  was 
becoming  intolerable  to  her — her  private  letters  at 
that  time  bear  ample  testimony  to  this.  As  to  the 
King,  he  was  entirely  subjugated.  Le  Tellier  was 
his  conscience ;  he  was  the  arbiter  and  the  fate  of 
France.  There  had  been  a  startling  proof  of  that 
in  the  case  of  the  recently  proposed  income  tax. 


94  THE  TRAGIC  END 

While  this  measure  was  under  discussion  the 
King  had  seemed  harassed  and  preoccupied,  and 
his  confessor  had  asked  the  reason  of  this.  Louis 
had  expressed  his  many  scruples.  "  Oh  ! "  Le  Tellier 
had  replied,  "  these  hesitations  are  a  proof  of  too 
delicate  a  conscience  !  however,  in  order  that  your 
Majesty's  mind  may  be  quite  at  rest,  I  will  consult 
the  casuists  of  my  order." 

A  few  days  later  the  confessor  assured  the 
King  that  the  matter  in  question  was  not  one  to 
cause  scruples,  since  a  monarch  is  always,  and  in 
any  case,  the  real  owner  of  all  the  possessions  in 
his  kingdom.  "  You  have  relieved  my  mind  very 
much,"  sighed  the  King,  "  now  I  shall  feel  at  peace 
about  this,"  and  the  tax  was  imposed. 

Father  Le  Tellier  exercised  his  ruthless  power 
with  all  the  more  violence,  because  he  could  not 
but  fear  that  his  days  were  limited.  The  Jesuits 
were  loathed,  their  tyranny  still  held  many  souls 
in  bondage ;  but  rebellion  was  astir,  and  the 
number  of  Jesuit  confessors  whose  supreme 
ministrations  at  death-beds  had  been  deliberately 
refused,  was  becoming  the  scandal  of  the  order. 
It  happened  more  and  more  frequently  that  the 
spirit  standing  on  the  threshold  of  Death  cast  off 
its  bondage,  and  there  were  some  striking 
defections.  Monsieur  le  Prince  himself,  father  of 
the  Duchesse  du  Maine  and  courtier  par  excellence 
declared  his  religious  standing  at  the  last  by  an 


THE  ROSE  OF  SAVOY  95 

act  of  stupendous  independence.  He  closed  his 
doors  to  his  own  Jesuit  confessor,  and  sent  for  the 
Pere  la  Tour,  a  member  of  the  Oratorians,  and 
the  bete  noire  of  the  Jesuits.  A  Stuart  princess, 
Louisa  Mary,  followed  suit;  she  refused  on  her 
death-bed  to  give  admittance  to  her  Jesuit  con- 
fessor, and  sent  instead  for  a  poor  priest  of  the 
parish  of  Saint-Germain  des  Pres. 

The  Church  and  the  State,  traditions  and  laws, 
all  that  had  been  and  had  appeared  immutable, 
had  reached  an  unexpected  turning  point — and 
France  was  about  to  enter  the  tragic  year  of 
1712.  A  few  months  before  the  Dauphin  had  died, 
and  the  country  had  mourned  but  little  over 
this  loss,  all  hopes  being  centred  round  his  son, 
the  Due  de  Bourgogne.  To  him  life  had  given  of 
its  best  gifts  ;  unbounded  energy,  a  clear  vision,  a 
rich  imagination,  wisdom  and  sympathy  beyond 
the  ken  of  his  contemporaries,  a  passionate  desire 
to  realise  great  aspirations.  His  young  wife,  the 
Duchesse  de  Bourgogne,  the  Rose  of  Savoy,  as 
history  has  caressingly  named  her,  illumined 
the  gloom  of  Versailles  with  the  young  light  of 
her  gaiety  and  of  her  charm.  Louis  XIV. 
idolised  her;  her  naturalness  and  her  spontaneity 
were  as  draughts  of  cool  spring  water  to  the 
jaded  sensibility  of  Madame  de  Maintenon.  The 
Court,  while  shaking  its  head  over  her  im- 
petuosity, or  envying  her  popularity,  was  conquered 


96  THE  TRAGIC  END 

by  the  rare  quality  of  her  youth  and  of  her 
vitality. 

No  heirs  to  the  throne  ever  possessed  the  heart 
of  the  country  more  entirely  than  the  Due  and 
the  Duchesse  de  Bourgogne.  Alas !  before  the 
second  month  of  the  year  1712  had  reached  its 
end  both  were  lying  dead  on  their  bed  of  state, 
and  the  same  funeral  procession  which  carried 
their  remains  to  Saint-Denis  conveyed  also  the 
body  of  the  little  Due  de  Bretagne,  their  eldest 
son,  who  had  died  a  few  days  after  them. 

Then  a  panic  seized  the  minds  of  the  public, 
the  word  "  poison  "  was  whispered  in  dark  corners, 
and  grew  into  a  rumour  which  arose  threateningly, 
and  mounted  higher  and  higher,  until  the  ugly  tide 
besmirched  the  name  of  the  King's  own  nephew, 
the  Due  d' Orleans.  Public  voice  called  him  em- 
poisonneur,  and  the  King,  his  judgment  obscured  by 
infection  from  public  passion,  very  nearly  yielded 
to  his  nephew's  indignant  request  that  he  might 
be  arrested  publicly,  and  with  him  his  famous 
master  in  chemistry,  Hombert,  and  that  both  might 
be  kept  prisoners  until  the  outrageous  allegations 
made  against  them  should  either  be  proved  or 
disproved.  Luckily  the  King's  arm  was  stayed 
in  time,  and  the  Royal  House  of  France  was  saved 
from  an  action,  the  very  finality  of  which  would 
have  indelibly  impressed  the  public  mind  with 
a  conviction  of  guilt. 


a  a 

3  a 

i— i  V3 

5  3 


HEAVY  DAYS  97 

Passion  subsided ;  reason  and  the  medical 
faculty  spoke  enlighteningly,  the  King  himself 
remembered  with  what  inner  conviction  he  had 
once  exclaimed :  "  Mon  neveu  est  un  fanfaron  de 
crimes."  Whatever  the  suspicions  had  been,  the 
Due  d'Orteans's  guilt  was  evidently  quite  out  of 
the  question ;  but  as  dramatic  agitation  died  out, 
the  gloom  which  settled  upon  the  Court  seemed 
the  heavier.  In  the  beginning  of  March  1712 
Madame  de  Maintenon  writes  to  the  Princesse 
des  Ursins: 

"  All  is  death  here,  Madame,  life  has  fled  from 
us ;  this  princess  (the  Duchesse  de  Bourgogne)  put 
life  into  everything,  charmed  us  all ;  we  feel  still 
heavy  and  stunned  with  our  loss,  and  every  day 
makes  us  realise  it  more.  I  cannot  see  the  King, 
nor  think  of  this  loss  without  utter  despair." 

All  that  meant  hope  and  youth  seemed  to 
have  deserted  Versailles ;  of  the  sons  of  the 
Dauphin  only  one  remained,  and  the  policy  which 
aimed  ever  at  preventing  younger  sons  from  being 
dangerous  rivals  to  the  heir  had  been  entirely 
successful  in  the  case  of  the  Due  de  Berry.  The 
King  had  had  many  proofs  of  it,  and  was  soon  to 
witness  a  public  exhibition  of  his  grandson's  pathetic 
incapability.  In  consequence  of  the  treaties  made 
at  the  close  of  the  war  of  the  Spanish  succession, 
the  Due  de  Berry  was  to  sign,  in  the  presence 

of  the  assembled  Parliament,  a  formal  renunciation 

G 


98  THE  TRAGIC  END 

to  all  claims  upon  the  Spanish  throne;   he  was, 
upon  this  occasion,  to  repeat  a  very  short  speech 
which  had  been  written  for  him,  and  which  he  had 
learned  by  heart.     "  Monsieur,"  he  began,  address- 
ing the  President  of  the  council,  "  Monsieur,  ..." 
and  after  vainly  repeating  that  word  five  or  six 
times    he    broke   down    entirely,   and   there   was 
nothing  left  for   Monsieur   le    President  but  to 
wait  tactfully  the  length  of  time  which  the  speech 
would  have  taken,  and  then  to  dispel  the  general 
embarrassment  by  answering  it,  as  if  it  had  been 
delivered.     Thus  at  least  the  remote  parts  of  the 
assembly  hall  could  be  under  the  illusion  that  the 
Prince  had  spoken.      Duclos,   who  in  his   secret 
Memoirs,  gives  many  details   about  this,  tells   of 
the  Due's  return  to  Versailles  in  gloomy  silence 
and  with  downcast  eyes,  he  tells  of  his  passionate 
outburst,  when  he  reached  at  last  the  privacy  of 
his  apartments. 

"I  was  a  younger  son,  they  were  afraid  of 
me,"  he  sobbed,  denouncing  the  unfairness  of  the 
education  which  had  made  him  what  he  was, 
"they  tried  to  make  an  idiot  of  me,  and  they 
have  succeeded,  they  never  taught  me  anything, 
except  hunting ;  I  am  incapable  of  doing  anything 
else." 

So  many  healthy  shoots  had,  in  this  way,  been 
maimed  and  cut  down  to  preserve  the  strength 
of  the  main  trunk  that  now  after  the  lightning 


THE  DYING  KING  99 

of  fate  had  struck  it,  it  stood  strangely  stripped 
and  isolated.  The  heir  to  the  throne  was  a  child 
of  two,  whose  feeble  health  struck  dismay  into 
the  hearts  of  loyal  subjects,  and  raised  hopes  in 
those  disloyal  ones  who  were  beginning  to  count 
on  it  as  a  strong  asset.  The  Due  d'Orleans's  party 
on  one  side,  the  Due  du  Maine's  faction  on  the 
other,  were  busy  building  plans  and  hopes  for  a 
near  future.  Madame  du  Maine,  without  seeming 
to  descend  from  the  clouds  where  she  dwelt  with 
her  sister  divinities,  her  intellectual  puzzles,  and 
her  complicated  diversions,  was  yet  secretly  bracing 
herself  to  a  political  struggle. 

The  King's  apathy  increased  from  day  to  day ; 
his  body,  so  pitilessly  trained  to  defy  all  onslaughts 
of  old  age  and  fatigue,  seemed  to  show  the  same 
immunity  as  before ;  he  dressed,  undressed,  dined, 
supped,  played  cards,  hunted,  drove  the  Royal 
coach  under  the  perpetual  observation  of  hundreds 
of  critical  courtiers.  Madame  de  Maintenon  may 
moan :  "  My  poor  head  feels  as  if  it  had  been 
quartered  between  four  horses,  .  .  ."  but  no  com- 
plaint escapes  from  the  King's  lips.  Only  his  spirit 
sinks  more  and  more  into  the  slough  of  indifference 
and  despondency — no  effort  to  rouse  him  is  of  any 
avail,  and  Madame  de  Maintenon  driven  by  black 
despair  into  total  recklessness  of  expression  is 
heard  to  exclaim  :  "  Quel  supplice  d'avoir  a  amuser 
un  homme  qui  n'est  plus  amusable  ! " 


CHAPTER  IX 

THE  KING'S  WILL 

THE  reproof  quoted  at  the  end  of  Chapter  VII. 
was  undeserved ;  the  Due  du  Maine  had  worked 
hard  in  his  own  subterranean  way,  and  had  amply 
proved  that  his  talent  for  intrigue  could  be  relied 
upon.  In  concert  with  Madame  de  Maintenon, 
his  faithful  ally,  he  had  diligently  helped  to 
promote  all  those  lapses  from  etiquette,  those 
confusions  of  ranks  and  rights  which  mark  the 
end  of  Louis  XIV.  reign,  and  which  were  so  pro- 
pitious to  a  situation  irreguliere.  What  barriers 
could  not  be  overthrown  at  a  time  when  the  old 
order  of  things  had  been  so  entirely  reversed  that 
a  bourgeois  minister  now  addressed  as  "  Monsieur  " 
an  hereditary  noble,  who  in  reply  called  him 
"Monseigneur,"and  when  Madame  de  Maintenon's 
decision  to  remain  standing  at  her  receptions  had 
levelled  all  hereditary  rights  to  sit,  to  a  polite 
obligation  to  stand. 

Monsieur  du  Maine  had  ever  been  vigilant  at 
his  post,  watching  for  the  opportune  moment  to 

increase    his    credit,   hiding    under   the  mask   of 

100 


A  CLIMBING  FAMILY  101 

filial  devotion  his  determination  to  conquer  any 
possible  chance  of  precedence,  to  pick  up  any 
stray  favour  which  might  fyl\ vftcMi  th§'°  King's 
hands.  His  efforts  had  been  .well  ;r^var4ed;;  from 
year  to  year  his  family  hail  risen  to  greater  con- 
sideration. After  being  declared  Ugttimes,  his 
brother,  the  Comte  de  Toulouse,  and  he  had 
been  raised  to  the  dignity  of  Peers  of  the  Realm, 
they  had  later  on  been  granted  equal  rights  with 
the  Princes  of  the  blood,  and  in  1714,  after  death 
had  so  fatally  decimated  the  Royal  Family  of 
France,  they  had  tasted  their  final  triumph  in 
listening  to  the  proclamation  which  declared  them 
heirs  to  the  throne. 

These  were  giddy  heights  to  tread  for  the 
bastard  cripple  and  his  poupee  du  sang,  but 
Madame  du  Maine  was  prepared  to  climb  higher 
still ;  she  walked  on  the  clouds  as  in  her  natural 
element,  exulting  over  the  realisation  of  that 
which  she  had  expected  with  perfect  confidence. 
The  Due,  on  the  other  hand,  lived  in  daily 
terror  of  the  abysses  which  loomed  by  the  side 
of  the  proud  heights.  He  read  mysterious  threats 
in  the  omniscient  Saint-Simon,  whenever  he  met 
that  implacable  inquisitor,  and  he  could  not  think 
without  a  shudder  of  the  awe-inspiring  words 
which  the  King  had  addressed  to  him  on  a  day 
which  had  been  one  of  the  memorable  landmarks 
in  his  progress.  The  Royal  will  had  just  been 

G2 


102  THE  KING'S  WILL 

signed,  and  the  King,  pointing  to  it,  and  inclined 
perhaps  to  take  a  revenge  for  the  coercion  to 
which-;,  he  had  been  submitted,  had  thrown  a 
significant  glance  at  his  ambitious  cripple :  "  You 
wished  it,"  he  said,  "  and  it  is  done,  but  remember 
that  without  me  you  would  be  nothing,  and  see 
that  you  keep  your  power  when  I  am  gone — if 
you  can ! " 

It  had  been  the  intoxication  which  comes  of 
success  which  had  plunged  Madame  du  Maine 
into  the  reckless  extravagance  of  the  Grandes 
Nuits.  "  The  Princesse's  taste  for  pleasure,"  reports 
Mademoiselle  Delaunay,  "had  then  reached  its 
zenith."  Towards  the  end  of  the  year  1714, 
however,  there  are  new  symptoms  in  the  air, 
and  though  they  are  not  yet  noticeable  to  many, 
the  keen  mind  of  the  chronicler  of  Sceaux  has 
detected  and  understood  them. 

"  The  King's  health  was  beginning  to  sink 
visibly,"  she  remarks  going  straight  to  the  root  of 
the  matter, "  no  one  wished  to  refer  to  it  and  every 
one  affected  to  disbelieve  it,  but  in  the  midst  of 
the  pleasures  which  seemed  to  solely  occupy  her, 
Madame  du  Maine  was  more  watchful  than  ever 
over  the  fortune  of  the  house  with  which  she 
had  allied  herself  and  the  establishment  of  its 
power  on  a  sure  basis." 

The  Duchesse  felt,  at  this  important  juncture, 
how  indispensable  it  was  to  know  fully  the 


LOUIS   DE   BOURBON, 
COMTE  DE  TOULOUSE. 


To  face  p.  102. 


INDECISION  103 

decisions  expressed  in  the  King's  will,  and  in 
order  to  gain  that  knowledge  she  decided  for 
the  first  time  to  interfere  openly  with  the  affairs 
of  the  State.  So  far  she  had  only  worked  through 
the  secret  agency  of  the  Duke,  goading  on 
pitilessly  what  she  called  his  "  damnable  apathy," 
railing  at  his  fears,  ridiculing  his  hesitations,  and 
terrorising  him  into  a  frenzy  of  action.  His 
native  prudence  had  saved  the  situation  in  spite 
of  all,  and  now,  as  events  proved,  her  incon- 
sequence was  to  endanger  it  seriously.  She  had 
determined  to  gain  a  knowledge  of  the  King's 
will,  but  even  whilst  working  for  this  end  she 
was  seized  most  inopportunely  with  one  of  her 
father's  fits  of  indecision. 

After  having  with  great  difficulty  obtained, 
through  Madame  de  Maintenon's  intermission,  the 
permission  to  see  the  Royal  will,  she  suddenly 
refused  to  take  advantage  of  this,  on  account  of 
the  condition  that  the  knowledge  gained  should 
entail  absolute  and  inviolable  secrecy.  This  con- 
dition, she  maintained,  would  paralyse  all  efforts 
by  which  she  might  otherwise  have  fortified  her 
position.  Her  arguments  were  not  particularly 
conclusive,  nor  did  they  appear  so  to  those  chiefly 
concerned :  the  Due  du  Maine  and  the  Comte  de 
Toulouse.  Should  the  will  be  read  ?  should  it  not 
be  read  ?  the  question  was  discussed  for  several 
days,  and  at  last  decided  in  the  negative.  But 


104  THE  KING'S   WILL 

hardly  had  an  intimation  of  this  been  despatched  to 
the  King,  when  the  decision  was  bitterly  deplored 
by  those  who  had  taken  it,  and  a  council  was 
appointed  to  consider  the  best  means  of  repairing 
this  grievous  error.  The  council,  composed  of 
the  premier  president,  Monsieur  de  Mesmes, 
Monsieur  de  Malezieu,  and  Monsieur  de  Valincourt 
(of  the  Comte  de  Toulouse's  household)  deliberated 
at  length  in  the  presence  of  the  parties  concerned. 
The  invaluable  advantage  of  having  a  full  know- 
ledge of  the  will  having  been  refused,  nothing 
remained  but  to  beg  humbly  for  a  partial  know- 
ledge, one  clause  of  it  at  least.  Which  clause 
should  be  chosen  as  the  most  significant  ? — more 
deliberations  ensued.  The  Duchesse  was  as  sure 
of  being  able  to  discover  the  "  magic  unit "  which 
would  contain  the  whole,  as  she  had  once  been 
convinced  of  finding  the  "  magic  square " ;  but 
her  extravagant  schemes  having  been  rejected  one 
by  one,  the  Comte  de  Toulouse's  proposal  was 
at  last  accepted.  He  had,  with  the  wisdom 
which  was  to  keep  his  craft  steady  in  the  midst 
of  the  universal  wreck,  hit  upon  the  very  point 
which  was  most  vital,  and  which  was  in  a  way 
the  "magic  unit." 

The  point  at  issue  was  to  discover  if  Louis  XIV. 
was  re-establishing  the  claims  of  his  grandson, 
Felipe  V.  of  Spain,  to  the  throne  of  France; 
failing  which,  the  future  King  being  still  a  child, 


BAD  TACTICS  105 

the  authority  would  naturally  devolve  upon  the 
Due  d'Orleans,  the  King's  nephew,  and  he  would 
be  the  one  rival  against  whom  all  forces  should 
be  concentrated.  The  request  was  presented  and 
granted,  and  it  was  then  known  that  Felipe  V. 
was  still  barred  from  the  line  of  succession.  This 
discovery  led  to  a  second  very  grave  mistake  in 
the  tactics  of  the  court  of  Sceaux.  In  order  to 
ingratiate  themselves  with  a  man  who  might  be  a 
power,  although  they  did  not  mean  him  to  be  the 
power,  they  informed  the  Due  d'Orleans  of  that 
most  weighty  of  the  King's  decisions. 

Deliberately  to  put  a  weapon  into  the  hand  of 
the  man  from  whom  you  fear  an  attack  seems 
absolute  madness.  At  that  time,  however,  the 
respective  position  of  the  Due  d'Orleans  and  the 
Due  du  Maine  was  not  clearly  defined  in  their 
own  minds ;  each  underrated  the  other's  chances, 
the  one  from  ignorance  of  Madame  de  Maintenon's 
successful  intrigues,  the  other  from  a  knowledge 
of  the  King's  embitterment  towards  his  nephew. 

The  information  which  was  sent  to  the  Regent, 
coupled  with  congratulations,  seems  at  the  best 
a  very  great  inconsequence  on  the  part  of  a 
house  which  had  clearly  shown  its  determination 
to  stand  aloof  from  the  House  of  Orleans.  The 
injudicious  service  rendered  by  the  Due  du  Maine 
to  his  opponent  brought  no  advantage  to  the  giver 
and  was  of  the  utmost  importance  to  him  who 


106  THE  KING'S  WILL 

received  it.  The  latter  had  not  been  popular, 
except  in  a  small  circle  of  his  own ;  but  now  he 
applied  himself  diligently  to  the  conquest  of  the 
great  nobles  and  dignitaries  of  the  realm. 

"  Very  lavish  of  his  promises,"  thus  Mademoiselle 
Delaunay  judges  him,  "  and  considering  his  word 
as  of  no  account,  he  pledged  himself  to  satisfy  all 
demands  in  the  event  of  his  becoming  the  master. 
By  similar  means  he  won  over  the  Parliament  and 
had  recourse  to  a  thousand  intrigues  in  order  to 
get  his  friends  and  partisans  into  power,  so  that  they 
might  be  of  use  to  him  later  on.  The  President 
was  to  all  appearances  devoted  to  the  House  of 
Maine,  and  yet  little  help  could  be  derived  from 
him  :  he  was  a  great  courtier,  but  a  mediocre  man, 
with  agreeable  manners  and  pleasing  wit,  but  weak 
and  timid  and  possessed  of  all  those  faults  which 
help  a  man  to  please  and  prevent  him  from  being 
useful." 

The  successes  achieved  by  the  Due  d'Orleans 
caused  great  perturbation  at  Sceaux  —  moreover 
a  sudden  aggravation  in  the  King's  state  plunged 
the  Due  and  the  Duchesse  du  Maine  into  the 
utmost  consternation.  They  had  not  yet  given 
up  all  hope  of  getting  a  fuller  knowledge  of  the 
Royal  will,  and  of  persuading  the  King  to  take 
during  his  lifetime  those  measures  which  would 
ensure  his  son's  power  after  his  death.  If  the 
end  should  come  before  this  had  been  contrived, 
they  felt  that  their  cause  might  be  lost  indeed. 


DEATH  OF  THE  KING  107 

Madame  du  Maine  forsook  at  a  moment's  notice 
the  engrossing  pleasures  of  Sceaux,  and  hastened 
to  Versailles,  in  order  at  least  to  gain  Madame  de 
Maintenon's  ear,  if  she  could  not  gain  access  to 
the  King.  She  found  a  court  already  disorganised 
by  the  approaching  events,  and  a  woman  in  whom 
all  other  interests  had  been  swept  away  by  the 
force  of  the  coming  catastrophe.  Madame  de 
Maintenon  could  be  of  no  use  at  this  juncture, 
and  little  help  could  be  expected  from  the  Due 
du  Maine  who  stood  day  after  day  in  stupefied 
despair  by  his  father's  bedside.  At  last  the  secrets, 
on  the  discovery  of  which  so  many  efforts  had  been 
wasted,  fell  spontaneously  from  the  King's  lips  a 
few  days  before  his  death. 

They  were  certainly  of  an  astonishing  nature ; 
during  the  last  years  of  his  reign  the  clever 
politician  had  entirely  died  in  Louis  XIV.,  leaving 
only  the  feeble  old  man,  harassed  by  intrigues, 
who  yielded  wearily  to  persuasion  and  coercion, 
with  an  utter  disregard  of  the  consequences.  The 
following  were  the  King's  testamentary  disposi- 
tions; instead  of  awarding  the  Regency  to  the 
Due  d'Orleans,  he  had  formed  a  conseil  de 
regence  the  members  of  which  had  all  been 
chosen  by  him,  his  nephew  being  only  appointed 
nominal  president  of  the  conseil.  Every  question 
discussed  in  the  council  was  to  be  decided  solely 
by  a  majority  of  votes.  The  Due  du  Maine,  on 


108  THE  KING'S  WILL 

the  other  hand,  was  apparently  overwhelmed  with 
bounties,  the  guardianship  of  the  young  King,  the 
superintendence  of  his  education,  the  responsibility 
of  his  personal  safety,  and  the  commandership  over 
the  Royal  Bodyguard.  The  King's  last  will 
seemed  to  be  an  absolute  challenge  to  the  mainten- 
ance of  public  order ;  on  the  one  hand,  slights  and 
no  measures  to  prevent  a  vengeance,  on  the  other, 
lavish  favours  and  no  power  to  uphold  them. 

The  Due  du  Maine  had  hoped  for  one  of  those 
compromises,  so  dear  to  his  heart,  by  which  one 
may  climb  the  summits,  while  yet  seeming  to  be 
treading  the  lowly  plains  ;  but  there  was  no  trace 
of  diplomacy  in  this  last  work  of  the  King's  hand, 
and  objections,  representations  were  of  no  avail. 
The  King  was  weary  of  complications  and  turmoil, 
and  nothing  could  raise  him  from  his  state  of 
apathy. 


CHAPTER  X 

RIVALRIES    AND    CONSPIRACIES 

ON  the  first  day  of  September  1715  King 
Louis  XIV.  died,  on  the  second  of  September 
Parliament  was  to  assemble  in  order  to  consider 
the  question  of  the  Regency — twenty -four  hours 
of  mortal  suspense  for  the  Due  and  the  Duchesse 
du  Maine!  Would  Parliament  sanction  the 
Royal  will,  would  it  annul  it  in  parts?  Alas, 
the  signs  by  which  events  are  read  beforehand 
were  now  in  favour  of  the  last  conjecture,  and 
yet  ...  in  the  excited  minds  of  the  Due  and 
the  Duchesse,  past  scenes  rose  up  to  flatter  them 
with  vain  hopes.  They  saw  once  more  in  imagina- 
tion, as  they  had  once  seen  in  reality,  the  lifeless 
bodies  of  the  Dauphin  and  of  the  Dauphine  lying 
on  their  bed  of  state,  and  the  Court  filing  past  to 
render  them  their  last  homage.  The  crowd,  massed 
round  the  vast  hall,  looks  on  in  mute  grief,  but 
as  the  Due  d'Orleans  approaches  the  body  of  the 
Dauphine,  the  beloved  of  all,  a  threatening  murmur 
rises  like  an  angry  sea  and  the  sinister  whisper: 

empoisonneur,  empoisonneur  encompasses  him  on 

109 


110  RIVALRIES  AND  CONSPIRACIES 

all  sides.  Now  the  funeral  procession  winds 
through  the  streets  of  Paris,  and  an  infuriated 
mob  pursues  the  Due  d'Orleans  with  threats  and 
insults.  In  front  of  the  Palais  Royal,  the  Due's 
residence,  indignation  rises  so  high  that  "for  a 
moment  there  were  reasons  to  fear  the  worst."1 

But  since  then  three  years  have  passed  bringing 
forgetfulness  to  unstable  minds,  and  even  Parlia- 
ment, which  once  shared  the  public  feeling,  and 
used  its  influence  to  strengthen  it,  could  no  more 
be  relied  upon.  The  Due  du  Maine  wavered 
between  fear  and  hope ;  could  it  be  possible  that 
the  same  Parliament,  which  three  years  before 
had  shuddered  at  the  enormity  of  the  crime, 
would  now  deliberately  elect  the  alleged  criminal 
to  the  most  responsible  post  in  the  State,  and 
entrust  to  him  the  frail  life  of  the  future  King, 
a  child  of  five?  It  seemed  incredible,  and  yet, 
all  through  the  long  hours  of  the  day,  and  the 
still  longer  watches  of  the  night,  the  Due  and 
the  Duchesse  feared  it  in  spite  of  themselves. 

A  significant  demonstration,  which  had  taken 
place  only  a  few  days  before  the  King's  death, 
had  revealed  in  which  direction  blew  the  wind 
of  popular  favour.  The  King,  having  ordered  a 
general  review  of  the  troops,  and  feeling  unable 
to  preside  at  it  in  person,  had  granted  to  the  Due 
du  Maine  the  very  signal  honour  of  representing 
him.  The  Due  was  cantering  proudly  at  the 

1  Saint-Simon. 


ORLEANS  REGENT  111 

head  of  his  battalions,  when  the  Due  d'Orleans 
appeared  upon  the  scene;  then  an  astonishing 
manoeuvre  took  place,  a  manoeuvre  which  seemed 
entirely  unpremeditated,  and  was  all  the  more 
impressive  for  it — with  one  accord  the  brilliant 
escort  of  the  Due  du  Maine  turned,  and  followed 
the  Due  d'Orleans.  .  .  . 

The  second  day  of  September  dawned  at  last 
and  realised  the  worst  previsions  of  the  House  of 
Maine.  The  King  was  dead,  his  wishes  were 
powerless.  Parliament  ignored  them  with  insult- 
ing deliberateness,  and  appointed  the  Due  d'Orldans 
Regent  of  France.  His  decrees  were,  it  is  true, 
to  be  checked  by  a  committee,  but  it  was  not 
probable  that  the  latter  would  have  much  weight. 
The  new  Regent  declared  in  his  own  facile  way 
that  "he  was  delighted  to  feel  his  hands  tied 
against  all  evil  doing,  and  free  to  commit  all 
good  deeds  ..."  and  proceeded  to  prove  it  by 
forcing  Parliament  to  annul  the  appointment  of 
the  Due  de  Maine  as  commander  of  the  Swiss 
Guard.  The  safety  of  the  little  King  being 
dependent  on  a  sufficient  military  force  to  assure 
it,  the  Due  de  Maine  saw  himself  compelled  to 
give  up  his  guardianship  over  the  King  also,  and 
at  the  end  of  that  fateful  day  he  saw  himself 
reduced  to  a  position  which  was  in  reality  nothing 
more  than  the  chief  tutorship  over  a  child  of  five. 

The  Due  and  the  Duchesse  du  Maine  took  this 
crushing  turn  of  Fortune's  wheel  each  according 


112  RIVALRIES   AND  CONSPIRACIES 

to  his  or  her  own  peculiar  temperament ;  the 
Due  with  a  silent  and  dogged  determination 
not  to  yield,  the  Duchesse  with  loud  recrimina- 
tions and  defiant  threats.  They  agreed  on  one 
point  only,  namely,  that  the  apartments  in  the 
Tuileries  which  belonged  by  right  to  those 
attached  to  the  person  of  the  King,  were  not  to 
be  despised,  and  they  installed  themselves  there 
after  the  little  King's  return  from  Vincennes. 

A  few  months  passed  in  relative  serenity,  and 
again  some  semblance  of  elation  seemed  to  reign 
in  the  Duchesse's  circle.  Now  that  the  disappear- 
ance of  Madame  de  Maintenon's  sombre  draperies 
had  given  the  signal  for  a  lifting  of  that  pall  of 
sadness  which  had  so  long  depressed  the  Court, 
the  Duchesse  was  not  unwilling  to  have  her  share 
of  Court  life,  and  to  mix  a  little  gaiety  with  her 
political  strenuousness. 

According  to  Mademoiselle  Delaunay  every  one, 
herself  excepted,  had  reason  to  rejoice  over  their 
change  of  residence ;  she,  however,  had  found  at 
the  Tuileries  the  inevitable  reduit  allotted  to  her 
as  usual,  without  a  window  or  a  fireplace.  But 
there  were  compensations — 

"  I  was  in  Paris,"  she  says,  "  where  it  had 
always  been  my  wish  to  live,  and  my  residence, 
in  spite  of  its  many  drawbacks,  saw  plenty  of 
good  company.  Since  I  have  been  in  a  position 
to  receive  my  friends  more  comfortably,  I  have 


THE   ABBE   DE  CHAULIEU  113 

not  known  many  to  seek  me !  I  was  young 
then,  and  that  is  worth  more  than  anything  one 
can  acquire,  after  the  loss  of  that  inestimable 
advantage ! " 

She  seems  to  have  had  a  very  good  time  indeed, 
so  much  so  that  the  old  Abbe  de  Chaulieu,  one 
of  her  devoted  friends,  ardent  in  his  admiration 
in  spite  of  his  eighty  years  and  more,  thought  it 
his  duty  to  warn  her  against  coquetry. 

"  I  assured  him,"  she  remarks,  "  that  my  coquetry 
was  only  a  dire  necessity  to  please,  in  order  to 
make  up  for  the  discomforts  of  my  lodgings.  .  .  . 
I  gave  him  my  word  of  honour,  which  I  have 
kept  faithfully,  that  as  soon  as  I  should  have  a 
window  and  a  fireplace,  I  should  give  up  my 
endeavours ! " 

The  old  Abbe  was  a  treasure,  a  rare  flower  of 
that  theory  of  Platonic  love,  held  in  such  honour 
among  the  adherents  of  Descartes's  philosophy. 
He  was  blind,  and  his  fiery  imagination  adorned 
Mademoiselle  Delaunay  with  all  the  graces  and  all 
the  charms.  "  I  deserved  none  of  the  epithets 
he  bestowed  upon  me,"  says  the  object  of  his 
delusions,  and  she  does  not  hesitate  to  prove  it 
later  on  in  a  portrait  which  she  draws  of  herself, 
according  to  one  of  the  favourite  customs  of  the 
time. 

"  Delaunay  is  of  medium  height,  thin,  dried  up, 
and  disagreeable.     Her  character  and  her  mind  are 


114  RIVALRIES  AND   CONSPIRACIES 

just  like  her  face ;  there  is  nothing  wrong  about 
them,  but  they  have  no  charm.  Her  bad  fortune 
has  added  to  her  value,  inasmuch  as,  according  to 
a  common  prejudice,  people  who  have  neither 
family  nor  wealth,  must  also  lack  cultivation; 
consequently  the  little  culture  she  has  wins  her 
easy  appreciation. 

"  Delaunay  has  had  an  excellent  education,  and 
from  it  she  has  derived  all  the  good  there  is  in  her : 
principles  and  a  certain  elevation  of  mind,  and 
some  fixed  rules  for  her  actions — rules  which  the 
force  of  habit  has  turned  into  a  second  nature. 
Her  one  folly  has  always  been  the  wish  to  be 
absolutely  reasonable,  and,  just  as  women  imagine 
they  must  have  a  fine  figure  because  they  feel  the 
discomfort  of  tight  stays,  so  she  has  believed 
herself  very  sensible,  because  her  commonsense 
has  ever  been  a  discomfort  and  a  burden  to  her. 

"She  has  never  been  able  to  check  the  vivacity 
of  her  temper,  nor  even  to  reduce  it  to  a  semblance 
of  moderation ;  this  has  often  caused  her  to  be 
disagreeable  to  her  superiors,  burdensome  to  society, 
and  quite  unbearable  to  her  subordinates ;  luckily 
Fate  has  not  put  her  in  a  position  to  subject  many 
to  her  vexatious  moods." 

Though  this  portrait  was  drawn  some  twenty 
years  later,  it  may  have  fitted  the  original 
then  in  a  few  points,  but  the  good  Abbe  de 
Chaulieu  would  have  allowed  none  of  the  defects 
alluded  to.  As  a  worthy  classical  scholar  of  his 
period,  he  compares  her  to  all  the  goddesses  of 


AN  INSISTENT  FRIEND  115 

mythology,  and  proclaims  himself  now  bound  in 
chains  like  Prometheus,  now  pierced  by  all  the 
arrows  of  Cupid's  quiver.  His  letters  and  poems, 
irreproachable  in  style,  were  marred  by  one  defect ; 
their  author,  being  blind,  had  to  entrust  the 
writing  of  them  to  his  page  boy,  who  was  wholly 
innocent  of  the  science  of  orthography,  and  must 
have  penned  strange  productions.  In  spite  of  the 
wild  flights  of  his  imagination,  he  must  have  had 
plenty  of  good,  sound  commonsense,  that  dear 
kind-hearted  old  Abbe' ;  and  his  practical  efforts 
to  cheer  Mademoiselle  Delaunay's  monotonous 
existence  were  quite  as  frequent  as  his  poetical 
ecstasies. 

"  The  abb^  often  proposed  to  add  presents  to 
the  incense  which  he  offered  me,"  we  read  in  the 
Memoirs,  "and  one  day,  annoyed  by  the  insistence 
with  which  he  begged  me  to  accept  a  thousand 
pistoles,  I  said  to  him :  '  Let  me  advise  you,  as  a 
proof  of  my  gratitude  for  your  generous  offers, 
not  to  make  similar  ones  to  many  women,  you 
might  find  one  who  would  take  you  at  your  word  1 ' 
'  Oh  1 '  he  replied,  '  I  know  quite  well  to  whom  I 
am  addressing  these ! '  His  naive  answer  made  me 
laugh.  He  often  exhorted  me  to  adorn  myself 
more,  and  tried  to  make  me  feel  ashamed  of  not 
being  more  elegantly  dressed.  '  Abbe,'  I  used  to 
say  to  him,  *  Je  me  pare  de  ce  qui  me  manque/ 

"  Having  no  other  means  to  give  me  pleasure 
than  by  his  attentions,  he  increased  them  un- 
ceasingly. He  wrote  to  me  every  morning,  and 


116  RIVALRIES   AND  CONSPIRACIES 

came  to  see  me  every  day,  unless  I  put  off  his 
visit.  The  letters  he  sent  me  enquired  into  my 
wishes  for  the  day ;  and  if  I  preferred  his  carriage 
to  his  society,  he  sent  me  the  former  without 
demur,  and  I  could  dispose  of  it  as  I  liked." 

If  Mademoiselle  Delaunay's  social  position  had 
improved  since  the  household  had  moved  to  the 
Tuileries,  her  duties  as  first  waiting  -  woman  had 
not  become  lighter.  For  some  time  past  anxieties 
had  deprived  Madame  du  Maine  of  what  small 
inclination  to  sleep  she  had  ever  possessed,  and 
the  tales  with  which  one  of  her  women  had  been 
wont  to  read  her  to  sleep  now  failed  in  their 
effect. 

With  unshaken  confidence  in  the  soporific 
virtues  of  these  masterpieces  of  inanity,  the 
Duchesse  declared  that  the  reader  was  at  fault,  not 
the  matter  read,  and  she  transferred  the  office  to 
Mademoiselle  Delaunay.  The  truth  was  that  she 
longed  for  the  contact  of  a  mind  able  to  share  the 
burdens  of  her  own,  and  to  help  her  more  efficiently 
than  could  a  mere  droning  voice  to  get  through 
the  interminable  hours  of  the  night. 

More  or  less  fantastical  fears  had  agitated  her 
first  months  at  the  Tuileries ;  but  now  a  black 
storm  was  surely  though  slowly  gathering  on  the 
horizon,  and  a  very  tangible  peril  was  at  hand. 

So  far  the  Due  du  Maine  had  only  lost  a  power 
which  he  had  really  never  possessed,  except  during 


THE   RIVAL  LEGITIMATES  117 

a  few  brief  moments  of  exultant  expectation,  but 
now  he  was  threatened  with  the  loss  of  the  very 
titles  and  prerogatives  which  alone  assured  his  social 
position.  The  attack  was  led  by  the  Duchesse  du 
Maine's  own  nephew,  commonly  called  Monsieur 
le  Due.  It  was  he  who,  in  the  ensuing  quarrel 
which  assumed  gigantic  proportions,  and  is  known 
as  the  war  between  les  princes  Ugitimes  and 
les  princes  legitimes,  headed  the  side  of  the 
legitimates.  A  sorry  looking  leader  to  represent 
high  lineage,  the  pure  and  proud  blood  of  the 
Royal  Family  of  France !  He  was  a  hideous, 
one  -  eyed  wretch,  whose  physical  repulsiveness 
was  only  equalled  by  his  natural  malevolence. 

His  enmity  against  the  house  of  Maine  had 
begun  long  before,  on  the  occasion  of  a  law-suit 
regarding  the  will  and  property  of  the  late 
Monsieur  le  Prince,  the  father  of  the  Duchesse  du 
Maine.  Monsieur  le  Due  had  been  on  the  losing 
side,  and  had  sworn  vengeance  against  the  winners. 
While  waiting  for  a  big  opportunity,  he  had  not 
missed  any  chance  for  petty  persecutions,  refusing, 
for  instance,  to  sign  deeds  in  which  Monsieur  du 
Maine  was  taking  his  legal  rank  of  prince  of  the 
royal  blood,  and  affecting  on  all  occasions  to  deny 
the  dignities  conferred  upon  him  by  the  King. 

Among  the  multitudinous  promises  given 
by  the  Due  d'Orleans,  before  his  accession  to 
the  Regency,  was  a  formal  one  made  to  Monsieur 


118  RIVALRIES  AND  CONSPIRACIES 

le  Due,  to  annul  the  royal  decrees,  which 
gave  the  princes  legitimes  their  rank  and  their 
prerogatives ;  he  had,  however,  found  this  promise 
as  difficult  to  keep  as  most  of  the  others. 

He  realised  how  fatal  it  would  be  to  foment 
further  dissensions  in  a  State  already  divided 
against  itself.  Moreover  his  own  wife,  the 
Duchesse  d'Orleans,  was  a  sister  of  the  Due 
du  Maine,  and  however  little  respect  he  had 
shown  her,  he  was  loth  to  raise  the  cry  which 
would  again  draw  public  attention  to  the  stain 
on  his  own  escutcheon.  So  he  dallied  in  his 
own  true  way,  and  strove  to  keep  in  with  both 
parties ;  fearing  the  anger  of  Monsieur  le  Due 
and  his  partisans,  he  refused  to  the  Comte  d'Eu, 
second  son  of  the  Due  du  Maine,  the  privilege 
by  which,  as  a  prince  of  the  royal  blood,  he 
was  entitled  to  a  seat  in  Parliament  on  the 
completion  of  his  fifteenth  year,  but  he  also 
declined  to  take  active  steps  in  the  cause  of 
the  legitimate  princes. 

Monsieur  le  Due  was  not  a  man  to  waste 
his  anger  in  fruitless  waiting,  and  with  the 
Prince  de  Conti  and  the  Comte  de  Charolais, 
he  drew  up  against  the  legitimes  a  petition  which 
he  addressed  straight  to  the  King.  The  party 
attacked  retaliated  by  means  of  another  petition, 
which  demanded  that  the  question  at  issue  should 
be  adjourned  to  the  time  of  the  King's  majority. 


AN  INVOLVED  LAW-SUIT  119 

The  Regent,  pressed  hard  on  all  sides,  shifted 
his  responsibility  as  far  as  was  possible,  by 
electing  a  committee  which  was  to  decide  the 
claims  of  both  parties.  Thereupon  Paris  witnessed 
the  development  of  one  of  the  most  interminable 
law  procedures  that  has  ever  excited  public 
curiosity,  racked  the  brains  of  lawyers,  and 
scattered  abroad  the  dust  of  thousands  of 
ancient  documents.  On  either  side  accusation 
was  piled  upon  accusation,  refutation  pitted 
against  refutation,  plea  against  plea,  precedent 
against  precedent. 

The  Duchesse  du  Maine  was  one  of  the  most 
passionate  amongst  the  combatants ;  she  had 
never  doubted  her  easy  supremacy  in  all  things, 
and  when,  through  the  stress  of  circumstances, 
she  was  forced  to  attack  the  involved  questions 
of  the  law,  she  felt  persuaded  that  she  would 
find  the  conclusive  documents  and  arguments 
which  would  ensure  a  brilliant  victory  to  her 
side.  Meanwhile  the  whole  intellectual  coterie 
of  Sceaux  was  pressed  into  the  service  of  the 
great  science  of  chicanery  —  no  more  sonnets  or 
odes,  no  more  delightful  readings  of  the  Anti- 
Lucrece.  Monsieur  de  Malezieu  was  forced  into 
the  paths  where  an  oracle  can  be  most  oracular, 
though  he  secretly  despised  his  new  chances, 
and  even  Monsieur  de  Polignac  was  bidden 
to  forego  the  delights  of  aesthetic  discussions. 


120  RIVALRIES  AND   CONSPIRACIES 

Only  the  Due  du  Maine  was  excluded  from  the 
common  interest;  the  Duchesse  had  lost  her 
faith  in  his  efficiency  as  a  diplomat;  silence 
was  the  watch -word  in  his  presence,  and  he 
was  greeted  by  a  mysterious  hush  whenever  he 
presumed  to  enter  his  wife's  apartments. 

As  a  token  of  her  rising  favour,  Mademoiselle 
Delaunay  was  admitted  into  the  conspiracy ;  but, 
alas,  her  turn  came  at  night  when  hour  after 
hour  she  had  to  sit  by  the  Duchesse's  bedside. 

"  The  greatest  part  of  the  night,"  she  says,  "  was 
spent  in  laborious  researches.  The  enormous 
volumes  piled  upon  the  bed  like  so  many 
mountains  crushing  her  made  Madame  du  Maine 
seem  a  veritable  Encelas  buried  under  Mount 
Etna !  I  helped  her  with  her  work,  turned  over 
endless  old  chronicles,  ancient  and  modern  books 
of  law,  until  at  last  the  excess  of  fatigue  drove 
the  Princess  to  think  of  taking  some  rest.  Then 
I  had  to  read  her  to  sleep,  and  after  that  only 
I  was  free  to  seek  in  my  turn  sleep  which  very 
often  would  not  come." 

Mademoiselle  Delaunay 's  task  became  more 
arduous  still,  when  the  rumour  of  Madame  du 
Maine's  researches  began  to  spread  through  Paris 
and  to  attract  all  those  needy  adventurers  or 
would-be  savants,  who  are  ever  on  the  lookout 
for  a  chance  to  make  their  problematic  fortune. 
As  Madame  du  Maine  had  no  time  to  test 


AN  ORIGINAL 

their    abilities,     the     task     devolved     upon  her 

first    waiting  -  woman   who,    to  judge    from  her 

descriptions,  was  often  sorely  puzzled  by  her 
interlocutors. 

"  Hundreds  of  obscure  people  came  to  offer  their 
help  and  to  bring  their  meagre  discoveries ;  most 
of  them  were  sent  to  me,  or  at  least  advised 
to  come  to  me.  One  appeared,  among  others, 
who  was  renowned  for  his  great  learning ;  but 
he  was  more  of  a  Hebrew  than  a  Frenchman, 
and  more  conversant  with  the  customs  of  the 
Chaldeans  than  with  those  of  this  country.  He 
knew  no  court  except  that  of  Semiramis,  and 
yet  he  asked  to  come  to  ours  with  his  ancient  lore 
which  could  be  of  little  use  for  our  present 
affair ;  precedents  taken  from  the  family  of 
Nimrod  were  not  likely  to  be  conclusive  in 
the  case  of  Louis  XIV. 's  family!  A  day  was, 
however,  fixed  for  an  interview  with  him,  and  he 
was  referred  to  me.  When  he  arrived  I  was 
assisting  at  Madame  du  Maine's  toilet,  and 
somebody  came  to  call  me.  She  said  to  me: 
'Don't  go,  let  him  come  in  here;  I  will  see 
him.'  He  came  into  her  room,  persuaded  that 
he  was  being  taken  to  one  of  her  waiting- 
women.  The  sumptuous  apartment,  the  para- 
phernalia of  the  toilet,  the  number  of  people 
in  waiting,  did  not  dispel  his  first  idea.  He 
called  the  Duchesse,  'Mademoiselle'  all  through 
his  conversation  with  her,  and  went  away  without 
having  a  suspicion  that  he  had  been  speaking  to 
anybody  but  me." 


RIVALRIES  AND  CONSPIRACIES 

Strange  dinner  and  supper  parties  were  among 
the  unexpected  consequences  of  the  Duchesses 
legal  activity.  Most  of  those  improvised  oracles 
and  Pythonesses  who  came  to  offer  their  wisdom 
were  more  or  less  famished  individuals,  who  vowed 
with  charming  naivete'  that  their  advice  was  always 
superior  during  or  after  a  meal.  One  or  two 
picturesque  pages  in  the  Memoirs  are  devoted  to 
these  feasts. 

"  This  traffic  of  erudition  put  me  into  relation 
with  all  kinds  of  people.  One  of  the  most 
tenacious  of  them  was  a  certain  Abbe  Lecamus, 
introduced  by  a  sham  countess  who  was  in  reality 
nothing  but  a  beggar.  They  both  played  a  part 
in  our  great  comedy,  though  their  platitude  made 
them  quite  unworthy  to  appear  in  it.  Among  our 
would-be  oracles  there  was  also  a  former  monk 
whom  the  countess  introduced  to  us,  armed  with 
his  writings.  She  had  persuaded  him  that,  in  order 
to  see  them  truly  appreciated,  he  must  offer  me 
a  supper  at  his  house.  It  could  not  be  avoided. 
I  went  to  it  accompanied  by  our  famished  countess 
who  was  beside  herself  at  the  prospect  of  a  meal. 
I  found  in  the  house  a  company  which  looked 
more  as  if  it  belonged  to  the  world  of  shades  than 
to  this.  On  the  face  of  the  master  of  the  house, 
who  was  rich  but  extremely  miserly,  one  could 
read  quite  plainly  his  regret  at  having  to  feed  us 
at  all.  My  annoyance  was  as  great  as  his,  and 
from  utter  boredom,  or  for  want  of  something 
better  to  do,  I  seized  a  pair  of  tongs  and  began 


QUACKS   AND  ECCENTRICS  123 

to  poke  the  fire  which  was  rather  low.  I  got  hold 
of  something  which  my  treacherous  sight  made 
me  take  for  a  charred  log  which  had  got  displaced, 
and  which  I  pushed  back.  Alas !  it  proved  to  be 
a  very  black  chocolate  pot,  full  of  chocolate !  It 
had  nor  occurred  to  me  to  imagine  such  an 
addition  to  the  feast,  and  it  was  indeed  as  much 
out  of  place  as  my  imaginary  log.  The  liquid  was 
upset,  extinguishing  the  fire  and  the  mirth  of  the 
guests,  and  throwing  our  host  into  the  utmost 
consternation.  To  comfort  him,  1  suggested  that 
one  could  very  well  do  without  chocolate  after  a 
supper,  and  I  am  convinced  that  he  never  brewed 
any  again,  in  order  to  be  sure  of  not  meeting 
henceforth  with  such  a  sad  accident. 

"  I  went  with  the  countess  and  the  Abbe  to 
another  party,  still  more  eccentric.  They  showed 
me  another  intriguante  in  possession,  as  they 
said,  of  the  most  important  secrets.  She  was  a 
friend  of  a  certain  Abbe  de  Lerac,  who  had  written 
either  for  or  against  Monsieur  le  Due,  and  could 
throw  great  light  upon  our  subject.  Madame  la 
Duchesse  du  Maine,  like  those  patients  who  are 
not  satisfied  with  clever  doctors,  but  must  resort  to 
quacks  also,  listened  to  whatever  advice  came,  and 
then  sent  me  out  on  voyages  of  discovery.  All 
the  knowledge  that  I  gained  from  Dame  Dupuis, 
as  she  was  called,  was  an  absolute  conviction 
of  her  total  uselessness.  However,  our  people 
insisted,  and  vowed  that  after  a  meal  she  would 
speak  like  Pythia  on  her  tripod :  all  their  intrigues 
evidently  tended  only  towards  securing  some  good 
morsels.  I  was  driven  to  sitting  down  to  supper 


RIVALRIES  AND  CONSPIRACIES 

with  that  band  of  brigands.  They  took  me  to 
a  kind  of  tumbled  down  barn,  where  the  feast 
was  to  take  place.  We  winded  in  and  out  of 
dark  passages,  and  crossed  floors  worn  to  a  thin 
transparency ;  these  weird  haunts  made  me  expect 
terrifying  things.  I  did  not  know  whether  I  was 
being  taken  to  a  witches'  sabbath,  whether  I 
should  find  myself  among  cut-throats,  or  some- 
thing even  worse.  The  assembly,  when  I  found 
it  at  last,  did  not  look  re-assuring;  it  seemed 
made  up  of  people  well  fitted  for  uncouth 
mysteries,  the  songs  which  cheered  the  feast  were 
in  harmony  with  the  rest,  and  the  wine  which 
Dame  Dupuis  drank  freely  during  the  meal  did 
not  lure  out  of  her  any  of  her  profound  secrets. 
She  reappeared  later  on  with  her  ambiguous 
speeches,  upon  which  no  light  could  be  thrown. 
She  may  have  been  a  spy,  but  whatever  she  was, 
our  dealings  with  her  led  to  nothing,  and  I  only 
mention  her  because  her  name  appears  in  the 
authentic  documents  of  our  great  law  procedure." 

Alas  for  the  fruitless  interviews,  the  wasted 
feasts,  the  sleepless  nights!  The  case  of  the 
legitimes  was  judged  and  lost.  In  July  1717 
Parliament  revoked  the  royal  edict  which  had 
granted  to  the  princes  legitimes  the  right  to 
succeed  to  the  throne,  and  divested  them  of  their 
title  of  princes  of  the  blood. 

This  catastrophe  plunged  Madame  du  Maine 
into  the  utmost  despair.  She  began  by  over- 
whelming with  reproaches  that  ever-patient 


AN   INTRIGUE  WITH   SPAIN  125 

scapegoat,  her  husband,  and  then  proceeded  to 
reflect  over  means  of  retaliation.  Before  very 
long  her  over  -  wrought  imagination  was  filled 
with  visions  of  the  battles  of  an  avenging  war. 

The  first  Memoirs  about  the  Fronde  were  just 
then  being  published,  and  the  Duchesse  du  Maine 
had  no  difficulty  in  imagining  herself  a  second 
Mademoiselle  de  Montpensier,  riding  into  besieged 
cities  at  the  head  of  a  victorious  army  and  point- 
ing formidable  guns  at  the  very  windows  of  the 
arch-enemy,  the  Due  d'Orleans.  The  main  body 
of  those  victorious  troops  should  be  Spanish ;  it 
was  to  Spain  that  she  awarded  in  her  mind  the 
glory  of  playing,  after  her,  an  honourable  second 
in  the  heroic  epos  \  So  far  her  demands  upon 
Felipe  V.  had  been  of  a  more  modest  nature  ; 
she  had  only  asked  his  support  in  favour  of  her 
party's  request  that  the  States  General  should  be 
assembled,  in  order  to  revise  the  last  decisions 
taken  by  Parliament.  That  petition  was  already 
on  its  way  to  Spain,  and  had  been  entrusted  to 
a  Jesuit. 

Up  to  that  point,  the  Duchesse's  actions  had 
been  remarkable  for  their  unwonted  moderation, 
but  when  rumours  reached  her  of  an  intrigue 
with  Spain  in  which  she  might  join,  it  was  not 
in  her  power  to  resist.  All  round  her,  events 
were  beginning  to  show  that  the  camp  of  the 
legitimes  was  not  the  only  one  in  which  the 


126  RIVALRIES  AND  CONSPIRACIES 

Regent  was  anathematised;  unfulfilled  promises, 
violated  oaths  were  raising  on  all  sides  anger 
and  rebellion.  Madame  du  Maine  would  have 
liked  to  have  made  common  cause  with  all  the 
discontented  ;  it  was  regrettable  that  chance  led  her 
to  league  herself  with  two  of  the  most  witless — 
the  Comte  de  Laval  and  the  Marquis  de  Pompadour. 
The  former,  whose  mind  was  not  over-fertile  in 
ideas,  was  further  hindered  in  the  enunciation  of 
the  few  he  had  by  having  to  wear  a  kind  of 
sinister  looking  muzzle  to  hold  up  his  jaw  which 
had  been  smashed  during  the  wars.  The  second 
of  the  conspirators  was  not  only  a  fool,  but  a 
coward  to  boot,  and  he  was  to  bear  himself  with 
pitiable  weakness  in  the  hour  of  peril.  The  two 
were  nevertheless  received  with  open  arms,  and 
under  their  distinguished  patronage,  Madame  du 
Maine  entered  into  negotiations  with  the  Spanish 
ambassador,  the  famous  Prince  of  Cellamare. 

The  Spanish  Embassy  was  already  under 
observation  and  specially  marked  out  by  the 
Regent's  spies,  but  this  only  added  to  the 
Duchesse's  delight  at  embarking  in  perilous  enter- 
prises. She  arranged  thrilling  interviews  in  the 
dead  of  the  night,  and  in  out  of  the  way  places, 
to  which  the  Comte  de  Laval,  disguised  as  a 
coachman,  had  the  privilege  of  driving  the  Spanish 
ambassador,  mysterious  meetings  under  one  of  the 
Seine  bridges  in  Paris,  in  which  Mademoiselle 


ENERGETIC   PENMANSHIP  127 

Delaunay   very   unwillingly  played    a    prominent 
part, 

Many  were  the  confabulations  and  many  the 
writings.  The  Duchesse  had  laid  in  a  good  store 
of  encre  sympathique ;  she  used  it  in  profusion, 
and  it  afforded  her  as  much  pleasure  in  itself  as 
the  drawing  up  of  her  political  manifestoes.  She 
had  composed  one  in  particular,  destined  to  point 
out  to  the  Spanish  Government  the  inadvisability 
of  approving  a  treatise  of  the  Quadruple  Alliance, 
which  was  too  favourable  to  the  Regent.  We 
must  believe  if  we  accept  Mademoiselle  Delaunay's 
authority,  that  it  was  an  excellent  production,  and 
Cellamare  got  it  safely  into  the  hands  of  his 
sovereign.  Another  composition,  alas,  had  a  less 
enviable  fate.  It  owed  its  origin  and  ill-starred 
career  to  the  following  circumstances.  The  Spanish 
ambassador,  who  does  not  seem  to  have  had  a 
high  opinion  of  his  own  or  of  his  country's 
epistolary  talent,  asked  Madame  du  Maine 
to  draw  up  a  model  of  two  letters  supposed 
to  have  been  sent  by  his  Government,  one 
addressed  to  the  King,  the  other  to  Parliament 
on  the  subject  of  the  convocation  of  the  States 
General. 

Madame  du  Maine  entrusted  this  task  to  the 
two  strongest  minds  among  her  conspirators, 
Monsieur  de  Malezieu  and  the  Cardinal  de 
Polignac.  They  produced  a  masterpiece,  as  was 


128  RIVALRIES   AND  CONSPIRACIES 

to  be  expected ;  but,  alas,  the  fact  that  Monsieur 
de  Polignac  was  a  Cardinal  as  well  as  a  con- 
spirator proved  fatal  to  the  cause.  As  he  was 
putting  the  last  stroke  of  his  pen  to  the  copy 
of  the  letter,  the  bells  for  the  King's  mass  began 
to  ring.  The  Cardinal,  who  "always  acquitted 
himself  in  the  most  seemly  manner  " l  of  his  duties 
as  Grand  Aumonier,  hurried  away,  leaving  to 
Monsieur  de  Malezieu  the  care  of  destroying  the 
rough  copy  of  the  document. 

The  oracle  of  Sceaux  was  likely  to  be  skilled 
in  this  peculiar  occupation,  as  Messieurs  de  Laval 
and  De  Pompadour  were  wont  to  cover  an  incon- 
ceivable amount  of  paper  with  the  ramblings  of 
their  incoherent  minds,  and  upon  him  devolved 
generally  the  task  of  destroying  these  divagations, 
as  soon  as  the  authors'  backs  were  turned.  On 
that  fatal  day,  however,  whether  from  negligence 
or  from  a  certain  pride  in  his  joint  authorship  of 
the  document,  Monsieur  de  Malezieu  did  not  at 
once  destroy  the  tell  -  tale  paper,  and  when  he 
wished  to  burn  it,  it  was  nowhere  to  be  found. 
He  spent  several  days  in  fruitless  search;  the 
missing  paper  remained  undiscovered,  and  did  not 
reappear  until  the  ill-fated  day  when  all  those 
concerned  with  its  contents  were  praying  most 
devoutly  for  its  eternal  disappearance. 

1  D'Argensou,  ' '  Me'moires." 


CHAPTER  XI 

HUMILIATION    OF   THE    HOUSE    OF   MAINE 

WHILE  the  Duchesse  du  Maine  was  relishing  to 
the  utmost  the  mystery  and  secrecy  of  her  political 
dealings,  the  Regent  was  being  informed  of  all  the 
movements  of  the  conspirators.  He  feared  them 
but  little,  these  dangerous  enemies  of  the  State, 
but  he  was  determined  to  expose  their  proceedings 
as  a  justification  for  the  final  overthrow  of  the 
House  of  Maine.  He  had  at  last  decided  to  enter 
into  an  alliance  with  George  I.  of  England — an 
alliance  strongly  advocated  by  Lord  Stair  and 
Cardinal  Dubois.  If  difficulties  were  to  arise  in 
connection  with  the  succession,  England's  help 
against  Spain  would  be  invaluable ;  and  the 
question  of  the  English  alliance  was  put  before 
Parliament.  The  Due  du  Maine,  clearly  seeing 
the  drift  of  the  question,  and  carried  away  by  his 
passion,  swerved  for  once  from  the  path  of  prudence, 
and  violently  opposed  the  alliance,  whereupon  the 
Regent  was  heard  to  exclaim  on  leaving  the 
Assembly :  "  Monsieur  du  Maine  has  taken  off  his 

129  i 


ISO          HUMILIATION  OF  THE   MAINES 

mask  at  last ! "  Whilst  deliberating  on  the  possi- 
bilities opened  up  by  such  an  unprecedented  piece 
of  imprudence,  the  Due  d'Orleans  was  by  degrees 
raising  the  strongest  advocates  of  his  policy  to  the 
most  prominent  offices  of  the  State,  and  all  those 
in  office  who  were  suspected  of  even  the  slightest 
connection  with  the  opposition  were  discharged 
one  after  the  other.  Monsieur  le  President  de 
Mesmes  was  soon  obliged  secretly  to  warn  Madame 
du  Maine  that  one  of  her  staunchest  friends, 
Monsieur  de  Noailles,  the  minister  of  finance, 
was  to  be  deprived  of  his  office  in  favour  of  a 
fanatical  adherent  of  the  Regent's  policy,  the 
Marquis  d'Argenson. 

At  Sceaux  warnings  began  to  pour  in  from  all 
sides ;  it  was  evident  that  the  Due  d'Orleans  had 
vowed  to  bring  about  the  complete  humiliation 
of  the  House  of  Maine,  and  alleging  the  fact  that 
the  court  of  Sceaux  entertained  treacherous  rela- 
tions with  Spain,  he  proposed  to  deprive  the  Due 
du  Maine  of  his  last  office  at  Court,  the  direction 
of  the  King's  education.  This  was  a  bold  move  in 
the  game  of  a  man  accused  of  having  poisoned 
both  the  father  and  the  mother  of  the  child  over 
whom  he  now  claimed  complete  control — and  at  a 
time  when  suspicion  still  rankled  in  many  minds  and 
ostentatiously  expressed  itself  in  the  most  insulting 
precautionary  measures.  The  old  Marechal  de 
Villeroi,  for  instance,  the  King's  governor,  kept  the 


WARNINGS  131 

bread  and  the  linen  under  lock  and  key,  and  affected 
special  precautions  in  reference  to  the  King's  wine, 
at  which  action,  as  Duclos  says  in  his  Memoirs, 
"  fools  marvelled,  and  ill  -  intentioned  people 
applauded ! " 

Notwithstanding  all  this,  the  Regent  dared  to 
propose  to  the  Council  for  the  Regency  the  change 
which  he  was  contemplating,  and  one  voice  only  was 
raised  in  protest.  The  Due  and  the  Duchesse  du 
Maine  were  warned  of  the  blow  which  threatened 
them,  and  lived  for  some  time  in  dreaded  anticipa- 
tion of  it ;  as  the  days  passed,  however,  and  brought 
no  catastrophe,  Madame  du  Maine's  elastic  nature 
rebounded  into  optimism,  and  on  the  eve  of  the 
26th  August,  in  honour  of  Saint  Louis,  her  patron 
saint,  she  gave  a  brilliant  reception  at  the  Arsenal. 
The  very  next  morning  was  to  witness  the  crash. 

The  Duchesse  was  sleeping  peacefully,  after 
the  gaieties  of  the  night,  when  a  messenger 
arrived  post-haste  from  the  Due,  who  had  returned 
to  the  Tuileries  a  few  hours  before.  Even  while 
she  hastily  prepared  to  obey  the  imperative 
message  which  called  her  back,  Parliament  was 
being  summoned  to  the  Tuileries,  where  the 
King  was  to  hold  a  lit  de  justice.  The  news 
had  burst  upon  the  Due  in  the  early  morning, 
when  one  of  the  gentlemen  of  his  household  had 
waked  him  with  the  intimation  that  something 
unusual  was  taking  place  in  the  palace  ;  a  sound  of 
hammering  was  distinctly  audible  above  the  Due's 


HUMILIATION    OF  THE   MAINES 

apartment,  and  the  explanation  of  this  untimely 
disturbance  —  it  was  then  five  o'clock  in  the 
morning  —  was  not  long  forthcoming :  a  small 
army  of  workmen  were  getting  ready  the  Throne 
Room. 

Monsieur  du  Maine  dressed  with  feverish  haste 
and  went  up  to  the  King's  apartment,  where  the 
Regent  soon  joined  him,  and  said  to  him  with 
triumphant  malice :  "  I  know  that  since  the 
last  edict  passed  by  Parliament,  you  have  not 
cared  for  public  assemblies ;  the  King  is  to  hold 
a  lit  de  justice  to-day,  your  absence  will  be 
excused."  "I  shall  dispense  with  this  ceremony 
all  the  more  willingly,  as  the  lit  de  ^justice  will 
not  concern  us,"  replied  the  Due  du  Maine. 
"Perhaps,"  retorted  the  Regent,  and  left  him 
to  ponder  on  that  fateful  word. 

The  lit  de  justice  was  opened ;  in  helpless 
consternation  and  abject  fear  the  Due  du 
Maine  wandered  about  the  Tuileries,  not  daring 
to  face  the  assembly  which  was  despoiling  him 
of  his  last  honours.  It  was  in  this  piteous 
state  that  the  Duchesse  found  him  and  strove 
in  vain  to  terrorise  him  into  action;  even  then 
the  wrath  of  his  dreaded  tyrant  could  not  make 
him  cross  the  threshold  of  the  salle  du  trone. 
In  the  stress  of  her  anxiety  to  know  something, 
at  least,  of  that  which  the  "  contemptible  coward," 
who  was  the  head  of  the  House  of  Maine, 
refused  to  hear,  the  Duchesse  bade  some  pages 


THE   LIT  DE  JUSTICE  133 

climb  up  the  balconies  and  spy  through  the 
windows  of  the  assembly  hall.  Clutching  at 
whatever  support  was  available,  and  straining 
their  eyes  and  ears,  they  were  able  to  catch 
some  scraps  at  least  of  the  momentous  events 
which  were  taking  place,  and  threw  them  to 
their  masters  below.  It  was  in  this  ignominious 
manner  that  the  Due  and  the  Duchesse  du  Maine 
first  learned  the  decrees  of  the  29th  August  1718. 

Never,  perhaps,  did  a  king  of  France  hold  a 
more  dramatic  lit  de  justice  than  did  the  little  boy 
king  of  eight,  around  whose  childish  unconscious- 
ness passions  surged  so  high  on  that  memorable 
day.  "  The  expression  and  the  countenance  of 
those  who  were  present,"  says  the  Due  de  Saint- 
Simon  in  his  Memoirs,  "  beggar  description." 

At  last  the  momentous  question  of  the 
relative  rights  of  the  legitimes  and  the  legitimes 
was  to  be  finally  decided,  and  the  former,  on 
whose  side  were  ranged  the  dukes  and  peers, 
knew  that  their  hour  of  triumph  had  come. 
Many  of  those  present  could  hardly  refrain 
from  giving  vent  to  their  feelings  of  exultation. 

"  It  was  well  known,"  says  Saint-Simon,  "  with 
what  ardour  I  had  defended  the  cause  of  the 
Peers  against  the  privileges  of  the  legitimes. 
I  therefore  imparted  to  my  countenance  an 
additional  expression  of  gravity  and  modesty, 
and,  slowly  getting  my  eyes  under  proper 

I  2 


134          HUMILIATION  OF  THE   MAINES 

control,  I  resolved  to  look  no  one  in  the 
face.  As  soon  as  the  Regent  had  opened  his 
lips,  Monsieur  le  Due  had  darted  at  me  a 
triumphant  glance  which  had  all  but  destroyed 
hiy  impassibility;  it  was  a  warning  to  me  to 
exaggerate  the  sobriety  of  my  expression,  and 
to  avoid  all  possibility  that  our  eyes  should 
meet.  Thus  I  remained  self-contained,  motion- 
less, as  if  glued  to  my  seat,  yet  watching  with 
a  devouring  interest  everybody's  expression,  and 
in  a  state  of  the  utmost  tension ;  my  whole 
being  was  permeated  with  the  most  vivid  yet 
delicate  sensations  of  joy,  with  the  most  entrancing 
emotion,  with  a  happiness  for  which  I  had  longed 
with  boundless  yearning.  I  was  sweating  with 
anguish  at  my  efforts  to  repress  the  transports 
of  my  delight,  and  with  that  very  anguish  mingled 
a  sense  of  voluptuous  enjoyment,  such  as  I  never 
felt  either  before  or  after  that  great  day.  How 
truly  inferior  to  the  pleasures  of  the  mind  are 
the  mere  pleasures  of  the  senses ! " 

In  an  atmosphere  thus  fraught  with  passion 
the  decree  which  deprived  Monsieur  du  Maine 
of  his  last  honours  was  moved  without  en- 
countering any  resistance ;  a  feeble  protest 
raised  by  Parliament  was  swept  away,  and  the 
Due  du  Maine's  last  office  at  Court  was  given 
over  to  the  rival  who  had  been  most  violent  in 
his  persecutions  of  him,  to  Monsieur  le  Due, 
nephew  of  Madame  du  Maine. 

Intimation  was,  moreover,  given  to  the  chief 


DEPRIVED  135 

victim  of  the  day,  that  his  apartments  in  the 
Tuileries  should  be  vacated  within  a  few  hours. 
On  the  evening  of  that  same  27th  of  August 
Monsieur  le  Due  took  possession  of  his  new 
quarters,  while  his  vanquished  rivals  had  to  seek 
refuge  in  the  Hotel  de  Toulouse,  the  property 
of  Monsieur  du  Maine's  younger  brother,  the 
Comte  de  Toulouse. 

If  anything  could  add  to  the  bitterness  of 
this  sudden  blow,  it  was  the  invidious  distinction 
which  had  on  that  day  been  made  between  the 
two  brothers.  The  indictment  against  the  Due 
du  Maine  had  hardly  been  pronounced,  when 
the  Regent  had  risen  and  declared  before  the 
Assembly  that  he  had  "thought  it  fit  to  give 
back,  as  a  favour,  that  which  he  had  been 
obliged  to  take  away  for  the  sake  of  equity, 
and  to  make  a  personal  exception  in  favour  of 
Monsieur  le  Comte  de  Toulouse,  an  exception 
which  would  leave  him,  and  him  alone,  in  the 
possession  of  all  the  honours  that  he  had  hitherto 
enjoyed."  The  Regent  added  that  this  favour  was 
granted  to  the  Comte  de  Toulouse  in  recognition 
of  "his  virtue,  his  application,  his  probity,  and 
his  disinterestedness." 

However  luminous  the  younger  brother's 
virtues  may  have  been,  they  could  hardly  have 
shed  any  ray  of  comfort  upon  the  gloom  of  that 
terrible  night,  which  the  fugitives  spent  under 


1S6          HUMILIATION   OF  THE   MAINES 

his  roof.  "The  horror  of  this  flight,"  says 
Mademoiselle  Delaunay,  "  and  still  more  the 
event  which  was  the  cause  of  it,  made  an 
impression  upon  me,  such  as  I  have  never 
experienced  on  any  other  occasion.  Madame  la 
Duchesse  du  Maine  had  sent  me  to  Sceaux  to 
look  through  all  her  papers  and  to  burn  all  that 
could  seem  reprehensible.  I  returned  in  the 
evening  to  the  Hotel  de  Toulouse,  and  spent 
the  entire  night  by  the  bedside  of  Madame  la 
Duchesse,  whose  condition  was  past  description. 
She  was  in  a  state  of  prostration,  which  was  like 
an  entire  absence  of  life,  like  a  lethargic  sleep, 
from  which  she  only  roused  herself  now  and 
again  with  sudden,  convulsive  movements." 

A  plan  of  action  was  imperative,  nevertheless, 
and  the  next  day  the  Due  and  the  Duchesse, 
with  their  suite,  returned  to  Sceaux.  There  the 
same  shroud  of  passive  gloom  hung  heavily  over 
all  for  several  days,  only  lifted  here  and  there  by 
the  stirring  of  some  fear  or  anxiety  among  the 
members  of  the  conspiracy.  So  many  dangers 
threatened!  The  letters  which  the  Baron  de 
Walef  was  sending  from  Spain  might  be  inter- 
cepted at  any  time,  the  imprudence  of  Monsieur 
de  Pompadour  and  others  had  to  be  reckoned 
with.  The  most  uneasy  of  all  was  certainly 
Monsieur  de  Malezieu ;  he  now  spent  more  hours 
and  efforts  than  ever  in  the  quest  of  the  rough 


THE   DUCHESSE   PROSTRATE  137 

copy  of  that  letter  which  he  had  mislaid,  oscillating 
between  the  certainty  that  it  must  be  found  and 
the  conviction  that  it  had  been  stolen  and 
delivered  into  the  hands  of  the  Regent. 

Two  months  passed  without  any  further  com- 
plications, and  the  conspirators  began  to  breathe 
freely  again;  that  Madame  du  Maine's  crushed 
spirits  were  recovering  from  the  shock  which  they 
had  sustained,  was  amply  proved  by  the  fact 
that  she  now  returned  to  her  political  intrigues. 
A  certain  caution  still  characterised  her  actions : 
she  dared  not  hold  personal  intercourse  with 
her  allies  in  Paris,  but  she  could  not  resist  the 
wish  to  again  dip  her  fingers  into  the  troubled 
waters  of  intrigue  ;  she  did  many  foolish  things, 
one  of  which  was  to  send  Mademoiselle  Delaunay 
to  Paris  to  hold  a  secret  confabulation  with  the 
Comte  de  Laval.  The  messenger  had  little  faith 
in  the  efficiency  of  this  ill-advised  measure,  but,  as 
usual,  she  refrained  from  expressing  her  opinion, 
and  submitted  to  a  three  hours'  tete-a-tete  with 
the  Count.  She  emerged  from  it  in  a  state  of 
utter  mental  exhaustion ;  in  the  general  incoherence 
of  the  conversation  one  point  only,  it  seems,  had 
appealed  to  them  both  with  equal  force,  namely 
the  advisability  of  never  pronouncing  each  other's 
names!  .  .  . 

As  Mademoiselle  Delaunay  was  returning  to 
Sceaux,  in  the  dead   of  the  night,  according  to 


138          HUMILIATION   OF  THE   MAINES 

strict  injunctions,  her  carriage  was  overturned 
and  she  was  hurled  into  a  ditch.  "  At  the  time 
when  people  believed  in  omens,"  she  remarks, 
"this  one  would  not  have  been  despised." 

In  truth,  a  destructive  fate  was  rapidly  descend- 
ing upon  Sceaux,  called  down  by  Madame  du 
Maine's  very  efforts  to  ward  it  off.  She  brought 
about  the  final  catastrophe  in  less  than  two  months. 
Once  roused  from  her  torpor  she  felt  with  a 
goading  keenness  that  the  more  insults  she  had 
to  avenge,  the  more  she  needed  the  help  of 
Spain.  There  was  nothing  to  be  done  at  Sceaux, 
a  solitude  more  or  less  shunned  by  all,  and  under 
the  pretext  that  she  wanted  to  chose  a  new 
town  residence,  Madame  du  Maine  returned  to 
Paris. 

Her  allies  were  able  to  prove  to  her  that  they 
had  not  wasted  their  time,  even  while  deprived  of 
her  inspiring  presence.  Monsieur  de  Pompadour 
had  been  specially  hard  at  work,  a  towering 
pile  of  writings,  manifestoes,  letters,  declarations, 
formed  an  imposing  monument,  in  front  of  which 
Madame  de  Pompadour  would  stand  and  sigh 
despondently :  "  We  have  the  most  decisive  and  the 
most  useful  documents  ;  but  nothing  can  be  got 
through  to  the  Court  of  Spain ! "  The  opportunity 
at  last  presented  itself.  The  Abbe  Portocarrero, 
a  young  Spaniard  known  to  Madame  du  Maine, 
was  returning  to  his  country  in  a  travelling 


RETURN  TO   PARIS  139 

coach  which  possessed  the  inestimable  advantage 
of  a  secret  box  under  the  seat.  The  Abbe  was 
ready  to  vouch,  with  the  most  solemn  oaths,  for 
the  inviolability  of  his  coach,  and  although  his 
feeling  of  security  was  not  shared  by  all,  the 
occasion  seemed  too  good  to  be  wasted;  after 
some  hesitation  the  precious  papers  were  piled 
into  the  secret  box,  and  the  Abbe  started  for 
Spain. 

Meanwhile  one  of  these  small  causes  which 
produce  great  effects  was  taking  its  momentous 
share  in  the  development  of  the  drama.  There 
was  on  the  evening  of  Portocarrero's  departure  a 
disappointed  woman  in  the  establishment  of  La 
Fillon  in  Paris;  a  rendezvous  which  had  been 
arranged  was  countermanded.  There  was  nothing 
very  unusual  about  an  occurrence  of  that  kind, 
but  the  excuse  which  explained  it  raised  it  to 
the  importance  of  an  affair  of  State.  "  I  cannot 
come,"  had  written  one  of  the  secretaries  of  the 
Spanish  Embassy,  to  the  woman  who  expected 
him,  "on  account  of  the  enormous  number  of 
despatches  necessitated  by  the  Abbe  Portocarrero's 
departure  for  Spain." 

The  woman  thought  it  advisable  to  put  this 
excuse  before  La  Fillon,  and  the  latter,  perhaps 
one  of  the  numerous  spies  employed  by  the 
Government,  sent  the  Regent  an  intimation  of 
what  had  happened. 


140          HUMILIATION   OF  THE   MAINES 

Now  Fortune  was  pleased  in  this  case,  as  in 
many  others,  to  follow  her  caprices  and  to  favour 
first  one  side  of  the  game  and  then  the  other.  It 
is  true  that  Portocarrero  was  pursued  at  once, 
stopped  at  Poitiers,  and  deprived  of  all  his  papers 
in  spite  of  the  wonderful  structure  of  his  coach ; 
but  once  despoiled  of  his  despatches  he  was 
released,  and  the  papers  which  were  brought 
back  to  the  Regent,  were  stopped  by  an  insur- 
mountable barrier,  just  before  reaching  their  final 
destination. 

They  were  stopped  at  the  door  of  the  Regent's 
private  apartments.  It  was  late,  and  the  Due 
d'Orle'ans  had  just  sat  down  to  one  of  his  notorious 
midnight  revels  with  his  roues,  as  he  called 
his  friends  in  debauchery,  and  a  few  women  of 
"middling  virtue,"  as  Saint- Simon  characterises 
them.  The  sumptuous  table  with  its  shimmering 
gold  plate  was  awaiting  the  Lucullan  repast ; 
the  jovial  company  was  perhaps  lending  a  hand 
to  the  professional  cooks,  as  was  its  custom, 
or  the  witty  assembly  was  holding  its  usual 
review  of  the  scandals  and  the  comedies  of  the 
Court. 

Perhaps  the  Regent's  favourite  mistress, 
Madame  de  Sabran,  "  slightly  debauched,  but 
not  wicked,"  had  just  declared,  looking  at  her 
lover  in  one  of  her  defiant  moods,  that  "  God 
has  made  princes  and  lackeys  of  the  same  clay, 


A   LUCULLAN  REPAST  141 

carefully  separating  it  from  that  out  of  which 
other  men  were  made."  Whatever  may  have  been 
happening  behind  the  closed  doors,  the  orders 
were  strict,  and  no  one  dared  go  against  them. 

"From  the  time  of  the  supper  hour,"  says 
Saint  -  Simon,  "  everything  was  so  strongly 
barricaded  that  it  was  useless  to  try  to  gain 
access  to  the  Regent — even  about  affairs  of  the 
most  vital  interest  to  the  State  or  to  himself." 

On  being  released,  Portocarrero  had  at  once 
despatched  a  secret  messenger  with  a  warning  to 
the  Spanish  Embassy,  and  on  that  occasion  the 
Regent's  dilatory  methods  of  treating  business 
gave  the  Spanish  ambassador  a  margin  of  sixteen 
hours  in  which  to  act.  Trusting  to  luck  and 
to  the  Regent's  temperament,  he  believed  he 
could  safely  send  into  Spain  the  most  compro- 
mising papers  which  remained  still  in  his  charge. 
He  sent  them  to  a  certain  Abbe  Brigaut,  with 
a  hundred  louis,  and  the  order  to  start  out  at 
once.  The  Abbe,  by  no  means  a  heroical  con- 
spirator, took  the  hundred  louis  and  the  papers 
but  only  kept  the  money ;  he  left  the  papers  in 
Paris,  in  the  charge  of  a  friend,  the  Chevalier  de 
Menil,  telling  him  that  they  were  some  old  family 
deeds.  Then,  with  a  lighter  heart,  he  started 
on  his  way. 

Of  all  these  events,  nothing  transpired  until 
the  following  day.  In  the  afternoon  of  that  9th 


142          HUMILIATION   OF  THE   MAINES 

day  of  December  1718,  one  of  the  Due  du  Maine's 
gentlemen  -  in  -  waiting  rushed  into  Mademoiselle 
Delaunay's  apartment  with  the  startling  news  that 
the  Spanish  Embassy  was  under  military  occupa- 
tion and  the  whole  neighbourhood  under  police 
supervision ;  but  that  the  reason  of  it  was  not  yet 
known.  It  was  but  too  well  known  to  most  of  the 
inmates  of  Sceaux,  upon  whom  real  torture  was 
inflicted  by  the  comments  and  suppositions  of 
uninitiated  friends  who  appeared  one  after  the 
other,  full  of  the  same  subject.  Madame  du 
Maine  dared  not  try  to  escape  from  her  impor- 
tunate callers,  she  bravely  masked  her  anxiety 
under  a  feigned  indifference,  and  only  stole  a 
few  seconds  from  her  social  duties  to  hold  a 
hurried  interview  with  Mademoiselle  Delaunay, 
and  beg  her  to  ascertain  the  real  state  of 
affairs. 

The  details  of  the  total  failure  of  the  plot 
reached  Sceaux  by  degrees ;  first  the  news  of  the 
confiscation  of  Portocarrero's  papers,  then  the 
intimation  that  important  documents  had  been 
seized  at  the  Embassy,  and  at  last  the  announce- 
ment of  the  arrest  of  Prince  Cellamare  and  of  the 
imprisonment  of  the  Marquis  de  Pompadour  and 
the  Marquis  de  Saint  Genies.  One  hope  only 
remained:  the  Abbe  Brigaut  was  believed  to  be 
well  beyond  reach,  with  his  weighty  documents. 
Mademoiselle  Delaunay's  Memoirs  tell  how  this 


UNCERTAINTY   AT  SCEAUX  143 

last  hope  was  shattered,  two  days  after  the  first 
news  had  been  received. 

"  Madame  la  Duchesse  du  Maine  was  playing  a 
game  of  biribi,  according  to  her  custom  (she  was 
careful  not  to  make  any  change  in  her  usual 
round  of  occupations)  when  a  certain  Monsieur  de 
Chatillon,  a  very  morose  man,  who  hardly  ever 
spoke  at  all,  said  suddenly :  «  By  the  way,  here  is 
a  funny  piece  of  news :  in  connection  with  that 
affair  at  the  Spanish  embassy,  they  have  just 
arrested  and  sent  to  the  Bastille  a  certain  abbe 

Bri Bri '   He  could  not  recall  the  name 

and  none  of  those  who  knew  it  had  any  wish  to 
help  him.  At  last  he  found  the  name  and  added  : 
'  The  ridiculous  part  of  the  business  is  that  he  has 
confessed  everything,  and  there  must  be  now  a 
good  many  people  in  a  nice  state  of  embarrassment ! ' 
Then  he  burst  out  laughing,  a  thing  he  had  never 
been  known  to  do  before.  Madame  la  Duchesse 
du  Maine,  though  she  felt  not  the  least  inclination 
to  join  in  his  merriment,  said :  '  Yes,  that  is  indeed 
very  funny.'  '  It  is  enough  to  make  one  die  of 
laughter,'  rejoined  Monsieur  de  Chatillon.  Just 
think  of  these  people  who  believed  their  trans- 
action to  be  absolutely  safe,  and  here  comes  a 
fellow  who  tells  even  more  than  he  is  asked,  and 
gives  the  names  of  all  those  connected  with  the 
affair!" 

It  was  soon  known  that  the  Abbe  Brigaut  had 
effected  a  real  chef-d'oeuvre  of  blunders  ;  he  had 
disguised  himself  as  a  gallant  soldier  of  fortune, 


144  HUMILIATION  OF  THE   MAINES 

but  he  had  omitted  to  remove  from  his  pockets 
some  tell  -  tale  letters  addressed  to  "  the  Abbe 
Brigaut,"  and  he  had  hired  a  broken  down  old 
steed  which  hopelessly  belied  his  character  of  a 
dashing  cavalier !  The  ill-assorted  pair  had  ambled 
along  so  successfully  that  they  had  covered  several 
miles  in  three  days,  at  the  end  of  which  they 
had  been  stopped  in  their  triumphant  progress 
by  an  agent  of  the  Regent,  who  arrested  them 
at  Montargis,  a  very  short  distance  from  Paris. 
Luckily  by  the  time  the  Abbe  was  overtaken,  the 
papers  he  had  left  in  Paris  had  been  destroyed 
by  his  prudent  friend. 

At  the  news  of  the  arrest  of  the  Spanish 
Ambassador,  the  Chevalier  du  Menil,  who  was 
very  suspicious  of  the  documents  confided  to  him, 
took  it  upon  himself  to  violate  the  secrecy  of 
the  Abbe's  "family  papers."  He  found,  as  he 
had  expected,  that  very  few  of  the  documents 
answered  to  that  description,  whereupon  he  did 
not  hesitate  to  burn  the  rest.  The  conflagration 
thus  produced  had  hardly  subsided,  when  the 
Chevalier  du  Menil  was  ordered  to  appear  before 
Cardinal  Dubois,  the  Regent's  minister;  cross- 
examined  as  to  his  relations  with  the  Abbe 
Brigaut,  Monsieur  du  Menil  answered,  in  strict 
accordance  with  the  truth,  that  the  Abbe  had  never 
spoken  to  him  of  this  fatal  business ;  never  losing 
his  presence  of  mind,  he  appeared  at  last  to  be 


'  :  ^ t  x >Av//?/^fity/t- 


GUILLAUME,   CARDINAL   DUBOIS. 


fo  face  /.  144. 


FAMILY  PAPERS   RANSACKED  145 

yielding  to  the  force  of  much  persuasion,  and  made 
an  "  ingenuous  confession "  to  the  effect  that  he 
did  have  at  his  house  some  papers  entrusted  to 
him  by  the  Abbe.  The  papers  were  fetched  and 
the  light  of  innocence  seemed  to  shine  more  and 
more  over  the  incident  when  the  carefully-con- 
structed plan  was  ruined  by  the  Abbe  himself.  On 
being  told  that  his  papers  were  in  the  hands  of  the 
Regent,  he  exclaimed  :  "  Then  all  details  must  be 
known,  question  me  no  more,  fcr  every  point  of 
the  business  was  stated  in  those  papers ! "  Two 
days  later  Monsieur  du  Menil  was  in  the  Bastille. 
Each  morning  brought  tidings  of  a  new  arrest, 
and  Monsieur  and  Madame  du  Maine  lived  in 
hourly  expectation  of  a  royal  warrant  against  their 
persons.  The  measures  which  the  Regent  was 
taking  to  justify  his  treatment  of  the  affair  pointed 
to  an  even  more  rigorous  intervention  of  the  law, 
in  case  of  future  inculpations.  Copies  of  two 
letters  written  by  Cellamare  to  the  Spanish 
minister,  Cardinal  Alberoni,  were  put  into  public 
circulation,  and  were  headed  by  the  following 
declaration  from  the  Regent : — 

"  In  order  that  the  public  may  be  informed 
upon  what  foundation  is  based  the  resolution  taken 
by  his  Majesty  the  King  on  the  9th  instant,  namely, 
the  dismissal  of  Prince  Cellamare,  ambassador  of 
the  Court  of  Spain,  and  the  decree  that  he  should 
be  accompanied  as  far  as  the  Spanish  frontier  by 


146          HUMILIATION   OF  THE  MAINES 

one  of  the  gentlemen  of  his  suite,  we  have  com- 
manded to  be  printed  a  copy  of  two  letters  of 
the  said  ambassador  to  his  Eminence,  Cardinal 
Alberoni,  written  on  the  first  and  on  the  second 
day  of  this  month,  signed  by  the  said  ambassador 
and  written  throughout  in  his  own  hand,  without 
the  use  of  any  cipher." 

An  ominous  note  of  warning  ran  all  through 
the  paragraph  which  followed  the  text  of  the  two 
letters  :— 

"  When  the  service  of  the  King  and  the  necessary 
precautions  to  be  taken  for  the  safety  of  the 
State  will  permit  the  publication  of  the  plans, 
manifestos,  and  memoirs  quoted  in  these  two 
letters,  then  will  be  brought  to  light  all  the  circum- 
stances of  the  detestable  conspiracy  set  afoot  by 
the  said  ambassador  for  the  purpose  of  causing  a 
revolution  in  the  kingdom." 

From  this  declaration  it  was  clear  that  the 
diverse  ramifications  of  the  plot  known  in  history 
as  "  Cellamare's  conspiracy  "  would  be  considered 
entirely  homogeneous  with  their  root,  namely, 
the  plan  to  foster  the  general  discontent  then 
prevalent  in  France,  for  the  purpose  of  over- 
throwing the  Regent  and  strengthening  the  Spanish 
influence.  Viewed  in  this  light,  the  dealings  of  all 
those  implicated  would  bear  the  character  of  high 
treason  and  be  dealt  with  accordingly. 

For  a  time  it  seemed  as  if  Madame  du  Maine 


CELLAMARE'S  CONSPIRACY  147 

would  prove  herself  a  true  grand  -  daughter  of 
the  Grand  Conde.  Her  spirit  rose  with  the 
approach  of  danger,  and  her  dauntlessness  inspired 
all  those  around  her.  In  reality  it  was  her  innate 
sense  of  the  dramatic  which  was  revelling  in  the 
proportions  of  the  approaching  tragedy.  Never 
had  her  most  ambitious  productions  on  the  stage 
of  Sceaux  afforded  her  a  leading  part  of  such 
magnitude  !  This  portentous  time  of  waiting  was 
truly  one  of  those  psychological  crises  worthy 
of  the  choice  of  a  Corneille,  or  a  Racine,  and  there 
came  a  night  which  the  Duchesse  deemed  just  the 
one  to  figure  as  the  culminating  point,  as  a  kind 
of  third  act  in  a  classical  tragedy ! 

In  the  evening  a  secret  warning  had  been  sent 
by  the  Marquise  de  Lambert  that  the  arrest  was 
imminent.  Madame  du  Maine  assembled  around 
her  all  those  whom  she  considered  worthy  to 
figure  in  the  great  scene;  the  younger  Monsieur 
de  Malezieu  was  there,  endeavouring  to  find  the 
noble  answer  to  the  high-minded  tirade  of  the 
heroine;  the  Chevalier  de  Gavaudun  was  there 
with  his  polished  repartees ;  and  Mademoiselle 
Delaunay,  in  her  usual  role  of  the  classical 
confidente,  listened  politely  to  each  one  in  turn. 
A  few  others  were  there  besides,  but  Monsieur 
le  Due  du  Maine  was  not  amongst  them.  He 
had  acknowledged  his  inability  to  hold  his  own 
in  this  dramatic  performance,  and  had  retired  to 


148          HUMILIATION   OF  THE  MAINES 

Sceaux,  where  he  was  awaiting  his  fate  more  or 
less  ingloriously.     As  a  climax,  the  night  was  a 
failure,  for  it  wore  on  and  the  day   broke   and 
nothing    happened.      At    last    the    weary   actors 
retired  one  by  one,   and  no   one  remained  with 
the  exhausted  heroine,   who  had  thrown  herself 
on     her    bed,     except     her     faithful     confidente, 
Mademoiselle  Delaunay,  who  now  turned  to  that 
part  of  her  role  which  was  most  familiar  to  her, 
and  took  up  a  book  in  order  to  put  her  mistress 
to  sleep.     The  book  happened  to  be  Machiavelli's 
"  Decades,"  marked  at  the  chapter  called  "  Con- 
spiracies."    She  showed  it  to  the  Duchesse  who 
exclaimed  with  a  burst  of  laughter :  "  For  heaven's 
sake  put  away  this  evidence  against  us  as  fast  as 
you  can,  it  would  be  of  the  most  damning  nature." 
Four  or  five  days  went  by  without  bringing 
any  change ;  Madame  du  Maine,  having  a  great 
deal  of  leisure,  and  being  unable  to  devote  it  to 
anything  but  the  great  care  of  the  moment,  had 
undertaken  to  write  a  defence  of  her  acts,  which 
she  meant  to  entrust  to  her  mother,  Madame  la 
Princesse,  and  in  which  she  put  great  confidence. 
Before  she  could  finish  this  piece  of  eloquence, 
however,  she  was  arrested. 

"  Madame  la  Duchesse  having  spent  the  greater 
part  of  the  night  writing  her  apology  and  talking 
to  me  about  it,  went  to  sleep  about  six  o'clock 
and  I  retired.  I  was  just  beginning  to  doze,  when 


THE   DUCHESSE'S   APOLOGIA  149 

I  heard  my  door,  which  was  kept  on  the  latch, 
suddenly  open.  I  thought  that  Madame  la 
Duchesse  was  sending  for  me,  and  I  said  half 
in  a  dream:  'Who  is  it?'  An  unknown  voice 
answered :  '  In  the  service  of  the  King.'  Then 
I  understood  the  position.  I  was  bidden  in  a 
rather  uncivil  manner  to  get  up  at  once.  I 
obeyed  without  speaking.  It  was  on  the  29th 
of  December  and  still  very  dark.  The  people 
who  had  entered  my  room  had  come  without  a 
light ;  they  went  to  fetch  one,  and  I  could  then 
distinguish  an  officer  of  the  Guards  and  two 
musketeers.  The  officer  read  out  to  me  an  order 
which  enjoined  him  to  keep  a  close  watch  upon 
me. 

"  Meanwhile  I  proceeded  to  dress  and  asked 
for  my  maid,  whose  room  was  some  little  distance 
from  mine,  but  they  would  not  allow  her  to 
come.  The  whole  house  was  filled  with  guards 
and  musketeers,  and  no  one  could  move  about  any- 
where ;  she  tried  several  times  to  force  a  passage 
through  the  soldiers,  but  was  always  driven  back. 
I  was  in  a  state  of  horrible  anxiety  as  to  what 
was  happening  in  Madame  la  Duchesse  du  Maine's 
apartments,  for  I  did  not  doubt  that  she  was 
being  arrested  at  the  same  time,  and  surmised 
rightly  that  they  would  not  let  me  know  any- 
thing about  it.  I  learned  later  on  that  the  Due 
de  Bethune,  captain  of  the  guards,  accompanied 
by  Monsieur  de  la  Billarderie,  lieutenant  of  the 
King's  body  guard,  had  brought  her  the  King's 
order  for  her  imprisonment,  to  which  she  had 
submitted  without  any  resistance.  La  Billarderie 

K  2 


150          HUMILIATION   OF   THE   MAINES 

asked  the  woman  who  was  sleeping  in  Madame 
la  Duchesse  du  Maine's  room  whether  she  was 
not  the  Demoiselle  Delaunay.  She  denied  it  with 
great  determination,  feeling  no  desire,  for  the  time 
being,  to  undergo  the  treatment  destined  to  me. 

"  I  remained  alone  with  my  three  guards  from 
seven  until  eleven  o'clock  that  morning,  without 
knowing  anything  of  what  was  going  on  outside 
my  room ;  I  asked  one  of  them  with  whom  I 
affected  to  converse  light-heartedly  if  I  should 
not  accompany  Madame  du  Maine  in  the  event 
of  her  being  moved  to  some  other  residence.  He 
assured  me  that  she  would  not  be  denied  any- 
thing that  she  might  wish  to  request.  This  hope 
was  gratifying,  but  I  did  not  enjoy  it  long; 
another  guard  came  in  soon  to  announce  that 
the  Duchesse  had  gone,  and  that  now  I  could  be 
left  with  one  musketeer.  .  .  ." 

If  the  Regent's  police  agents  had  demurred 
for  a  time,  they  were  all  the  more  active  on 
that  29th  day  of  December  1718.  The  younger 
Monsieur  de  Malezieu,  the  Chevalier  de  Gavaudun, 
Mademoiselle  de  Montauban  were  arrested  with 
Madame  du  Maine  at  her  Paris  residence,  and 
also  two  footmen,  four  grooms,  and  two  chamber- 
maids. 

The  same  fate  was  at  the  same  time  overtaking 
the  Due  du  Maine  and  the  elder  Monsieur  de 
Malezieu  at  Sceaux.  While  the  papers  were 
being  examined  and  sifted  in  their  presence,  the 


POLICE   ACTIVITY  151 

King's  officer  suddenly  came  upon  the  long  lost 
copy  of  the  letter  which  had  so  far  eluded  all 
researches.  Monsieur  de  Malezieu  was  the  first 
to  spy  it,  as  it  lay  hidden  between  the  folds  of 
his  son's  marriage  contract,  and  with  a  violence 
born  of  a  long-standing  grudge,  he  pounced  upon 
the  refractory  document  and  tore  it  to  pieces. 
The  officer  seems  to  have  been  prepared  for  such 
emergencies ;  without  a  word  of  remonstrance  he 
picked  up  the  fragments,  and  later  on  they  were 
pieced  together  into  a  very  conclusive  evidence. 
As  the  weary  day  of  the  arrest  wore  on, 
Madame  du  Maine's  stoicism  forsook  her.  She 
had  never  imagined  for  one  instant  that  the 
Regent  could  forget  the  honours  due  to  her 
rank  and  her  person;  her  gloomiest  visions  of 
imprisonment  had  shown  her  nothing  worse  than 
some  distant  royal  residence  and  a  momentary 
seclusion  in  the  company  of  a  suitable  household. 
When  she  learned  that  she  was  being  taken  to 
the  fortress  of  Dijon,  her  indignation  knew  no 
bounds,  and  the  thought  that  her  prison  was  in 
Burgundy,  the  province  governed  by  Monsieur 
le  Due,  her  arch-enemy,  threw  her  into  a  frenzy 
of  despair.  If  we  are  to  believe  the  rather 
spiteful  pen  of  Madame,  the  Regent's  mother, 
"  she  nearly  choked  with  rage,"  and  fell  tooth 
arid  nail  upon  her  escort,  among  others  upon 
poor  La  Billarderie,  a  man  who  suffered  from 


152          HUMILIATION   OF  THE   MAINES 

deplorable  tender-heartedness,  and  who  was  deeply 
affected  by  the  harrowing  sight  of  a  great  princess' 
misfortunes. 

Mademoiselle  Delaunay  was  left  in  her  room, 
all  day  in  company  with  her  musketeer,  whilst  the 
house  was  being  searched  for  further  evidence. 

The  police  was  disappointed,  nothing  was 
found  over  which  Madame  du  Maine's  enemies 
could  have  rejoiced  except,  according  to  Madame, 
the  Regent's  mother,  some  letters  from  the 
Cardinal  de  Polignac,  which  were  evidently  not 
meant  for  publication.  The  answers  to  these 
were  seized  among  the  Cardinal's  papers,  and 
Madame  triumphantly  quotes  a  passage  from 
one  which,  she  says,  makes  her  "burst  into 
peals  of  laughter,  in  spite  of  her  sadness ! " 

About  seven  o'clock  at  night  the  police  had 
completed  its  business  at  Madame  du  Maine's 
house,  and  Mademoiselle  Delaunay  was  invited 
to  get  into  a  coach,  guarded  by  three  musketeers. 

"  I  had  an  idea,"  she  says,  "  that  the  drive 
would  not  be  a  long  one,  and  that  I  was  being- 
taken  to  the  Bastille :  in  fact  I  soon  arrived  there. 
They  made  me  alight  at  the  end  of  a  small  bridge, 
where  I  was  met  by  the  Governor.  After  having 
entered  the  prison,  I  was  kept  for  a  while  behind 
the  door,  because  of  the  arrival  of  some  of  our  party, 
whom  I  was  not  allowed  to  see.  I  understood 
nothing  of  all  these  ceremonies !  When  the 


ARRIVAL  AT  THE   BASTILLE  153 

prisoners  in  question  had  been  safely  put  into  their 
respective  niches,  the  Governor  came  to  fetch  me 
and  led  me  to  mine.  I  had  to  cross  more  bridges, 
when  one  could  hear  a  clanking  of  chains  which 
produced  anything  but  an  agreeable  harmony,  and 
at  last  I  arrived  in  a  big  room  with  four  dirty 
bare  walls,  all  scribbled  over  by  my  predecessors. 
It  was  so  utterly  devoid  of  furniture,  that  some 
one  had  to  go  and  fetch  me  a  stool  to  sit  on,  two 
stones  were  brought  in  to  support  a  lighted  fagot, 
and  a  small  end  of  a  candle  was  fastened  neatly 
into  the  wall  to  give  me  some  light.  All  these 
luxuries  having  been  provided  for  me,  the 
Governor  retired,  and  I  heard  the  grating  of  five 
or  six  heavy  keys,  and  of  quite  double  that  amount 
of  bolts." 


CHAPTER   XII 

THE    FIRST    YEARS    OF   THE   REGENCY 

THE  licence  and  disorder  which  characterised  the 
first  years  after  Louis  XIV. 's  death  were  a  direct 
challenge  to  conspirators.  The  Regent,  who  had 
won  his  power  by  an  act  of  intimidation,  only 
kept  it  by  virtue  of  the  disunion  existing  among 
rival  factions.  It  was  therefore  his  interest  to 
foment  dissensions  and  to  let  conspiracies  thrive 
for  a  time.  They  thrived  apace,  each  based  more 
or  less  on  the  probable  death  of  the  little 
King.  Philip  V.  of  Spain,  in  spite  of  renuncia- 
tion acts,  was  ready  to  forsake  his  kingdom 
at  any  time,  in  order  to  seize  the  crown  of 
France ;  he  would  also  willingly  have  snatched 
at  the  slightest  chance  to  wrest  the  Regency 
from  the  Due  d'Orleans,  and  had  already  made 
all  necessary  plans  for  establishing  a  vicarious 
government  in  Spain  during  his  absence.  The 
Condes,  hereditary  rivals  of  the  House  of  Orleans, 
upheld  this  plan  secretly. 

The    Due  du   Maine  went   on   dreaming  his 
154 


POMP   AND   DISPLAY  155 

ambitious  dreams,  and  devoted  a  considerable 
amount  of  his  colossal  fortune  to  the  buying  of 
influential  members  in  Parliament.  If  the  choice 
had  to  lie  between  Philip  V.  and  the  Due 
d'Orldans,  he  would,  of  course,  uphold  the  former, 
but  he  would  have  preferred  to  use  Spain  for  his 
own  ends,  and  he  was  scheming  accordingly. 
England,  who,  since  the  death  of  the  Austrian 
emperor  in  1711,  had  feared  Austrian  pretensions 
to  the  throne  of  Spain  far  more  than  French 
usurpations,  was  seeking  an  alliance  with  the 
Regent.  Lord  Stair,  British  ambassador  to  the 
Court  of  France,  was  endeavouring  to  persuade 
the  Due  d'Orleans  that  in  the  event  of  his 
ascending  the  throne,  his  position  would  be  very 
similar  to  that  of  George  I.,  usurper  of  the  Stuart 
rights,  and  on  that  basis  he  advised  an  alliance. 

The  Regent's  natural  nonchalance  prevented 
him  from  deciding  upon  any  definite  course.  He 
had  "all  the  gifts  except  that  of  making  use  of 
them,"  as  his  shrewd  mother  had  once  said  of 
him,  and  now  he  was  letting  things  go,  and 
allowing  the  direction  of  affairs  to  slip  more  and 
more  into  the  hands  of  a  low  intriguer  who  had 
the  soul  of  a  flunkey  and  the  manners  of  a  bully. 
The  Abbe  Dubois,  former  tutor  of  the  Due 
d'Orleans  and  his  future  prime  minister,  was 
beginning  to  cast  his  sinister  shadow  over  the  affairs 
of  France.  His  tyranny,  however,  was  not  felt 


156    THE  FIRST  YEARS  OF  THE   REGENCY 

yet;  neither  was  the  Regent's  authority,  and 
Duclos  aptly  expresses  the  situation  when  he 
says  that  "all  felt  that  they  could  regulate  their 
rights  according  to  their  pretensions."  Not  the 
least  among  these  was  the  Duchesse  de  Berry, 
the  Regent's  daughter,  a  reckless,  impetuous 
creature  whom  he  idolised.  She  had  trembled 
before  the  King  — "  elle  avait  rampe  devant 
Mademoiselle  de  Maintenon,"  as  some  Memoirs 
of  the  time  express  it — but  now  she  had  her 
revenge,  and  broke  loose  from  all  restraint. 

The  extravagance  of  her  caprices  kept  Paris 
in  a  perpetual  state  of  surprise  and  indignation. 
Now  she  demanded  a  special  bodyguard,  and, 
accompanied  by  it,  she  paraded  the  streets  of 
Paris  heralded  by  the  sound  of  trumpets;  now 
she  had  a  royal  canopy  erected  over  her  seat  at 
the  Opera,  or  at  the  Theatre  Francais  she  placed 
four  members  of  her  bodyguard  upon  the  stage, 
and  four  in  the  parterre. 

At  the  hue  and  cry  raised  by  each  of  these 
experiments  in  royal  display,  the  Regent's  authority 
had  to  intervene  and  forbid,  but  his  was  only  a  half- 
hearted repression.  He  had  a  passionate  admira- 
tion for  his  daughter's  daring  and  inexhaustible 
vitality ;  she  was  the  only  woman  who  could  keep 
abreast  of  him  in  his  breathless  race  for  pleasures, 
and  he  associated  her  more  and  more  with  his 
revels.  So  notorious  were  these  that  even  to  the 


A  TURNING   POINT  157 

Court  of  those  days,  the  situation  seemed  inde- 
fensible, and  ugly  whispers,  suggesting  the 
worst,  began  to  be  heard.  The  Regent  did  not 
hear  them,  however,  or  if  he  did,  he  did  not 
heed. 

A  new  fever  had  seized  Paris  ;  the  country  had 
stood  at  the  edge  of  an  abyss — national  bankruptcy, 
but  had  been  saved  as  by  a  miracle.  Law  had 
arrived  upon  the  scene  with  his  "  system " ;  his 
scheme  of  salvation  had  been  adopted,  and  Law's 
system  of  paper  money  was  now  in  full  swing. 
The  gambling  fever  was  upon  all ;  it  was  spread- 
ing like  a  devastating  fire,  and  within  its  grasp 
measures  of  prudence  were  as  blades  of  grass  in 
the  whirl  of  a  tempest.  Fortunes  were  made 
and  lost  in  one  day.  Even  then,  though  but 
few  suspected  it,  one  third  at  least  of  the  paper 
money  in  circulation  was  utterly  worthless,  yet 
the  issue  of  notes  continued,  and  no  one  who 
was  responsible  for  this  cared  or  dared  to  think 
of  the  crash  which  must  inevitably  follow. 

The  Regent  cared  least  of  all ;  for  years  past  he 
had  squandered  his  strength  with  reckless  dissipa- 
tion, now  his  excesses  were  beginning  to  tell  at 
last ;  his  vitality  was  drained  to  its  lowest  ebb. 
After  one  of  his  nightly  revels,  he  would  often  sink 
into  a  torpor  which  hung  like  a  dense  fog  between 
him  and  necessary  resolutions.  He  would  then 
yield  without  any  volition  of  his  own  to  any 


158    THE  FIRST  YEARS  OF  THE   REGENCY 

pressure  put  upon  him.  He  granted  favours  to 
friends  and  enemies  alike,  so  that  his  bounties 
soon  sank  as  low  in  value  as  any  of  Law's  paper 
money;  and  in  the  presence  of  such  weakness, 
people  began  to  regret  the  violation  of  the  late 
King's  will. 

It  was  a  favourable  time  for  an  attempt  at 
overthrowing  the  Government ;  the  Due  and 
Duchesse  du  Maine  had  chosen  their  hour  well, 
and  but  for  the  fact  that  Madame  du  Maine 
was  decidedly  not  a  politician,  the  whole  fate  of 
France  might  have  been  turned  in  that  very 
year  1718. 


CHAPTER   XIII 

AT   THE    BASTILLE 

MADEMOISELLE  DELAUNAY'S  imprisonment  was  to 
last  eighteen  months,  and  it  was  merciful  that  the 
luxury  of  knowing  that  beforehand  could  not  be 
added  to  those  other  "  comforts "  which  marked 
her  first  hour  in  the  Bastille.  In  spite  of  a  state 
of  despondency  which  was  natural  enough,  she 
soon  discovered  that  solitude  has  some  inherent 
advantages.  "I  found  more  liberty  than  I  had 
left  behind  me,"  she  says.  "  It  is  true  that 
in  a  prison  one  cannot  please  oneself,  but  on 
the  other  hand  one  need  not  please  any  one 
else."  On  the  whole  her  lot  was  very  bearable, 
and  hardly  in  keeping  with  the  traditional  ideas 
about  the  horrors  of  the  Bastille.  She  had  crossed 
its  threshold  with  the  natural  fears  inspired  by 
the  gruesome  tales  she  had  heard  about  it ;  with 
a  sickening  terror  she  had  listened  for  hours  to 
an  awful  grinding  sound  which  rose  from  some 
unknown  regions  just  below  her  room,  and  which 
she  attributed  to  the  working  of  some  instrument 

of  torture.     She  was  steeling  herself  to  encounter 

159 


160  AT  THE   BASTILLE 

this  nerve-racking  horror,  when,  through  a  chance 
remark  of  her  gaoler,  she  discovered  that  it  was 
nothing  more  formidable  than  the  turning  of 
the  spit  in  the  kitchen  below. 

Quite  tolerable  meals  were  sent  up  from 
that  homely  quarter  of  the  prison ;  they  were 
served  in  a  room  which  now  seemed  palatial, 
after  the  addition  of  a  bed,  an  armchair,  two 
chairs,  a  table,  and  a  jug  and  basin.  Mademoiselle 
Delaunay  was  not  alone,  she  had  been  allowed 
to  take  her  maid,  the  "  faithful  Rondel,"  with  her. 
They  played  cards  together,  or  while  the  mistress 
feasted  on  some  odd  volumes  of  "  Cleopatre,"  the 
only  literature  provided  for  her,  the  maid  amused 
herself  by  holding  a  washing  day  in  the  hand 
basin.  Nor  were  these  their  only  pastimes  ;  the 
two  women  obtained  from  the  authorities  the  per- 
mission to  keep  a  cat,  to  frighten  away  the  mice 
and  rats,  and  after  having  been  obliged  much 
against  their  will  to  witness  the  antics  of  the 
mice,  they  could  one  day  amuse  themselves  with 
looking  on  at  the  gambols  of  a  family  of  kittens  ! 

After  a  while  Mademoiselle  Delaunay  was 
allowed  the  use  of  paper  and  ink  ;  the  sheets  of 
paper  were  carefully  counted,  and,  as  they  had 
to  be  handed  back  to  the  Governor,  the  choice 
of  subjects  she  could  treat  was  limited ;  but 
that  did  not  discourage  the  author,  and  she 
edified  herself  and  the  Governor  with  "  Moral 


PHILIPPE,    DUG    D'ORLEANS, 
REGENT  :    1715-1723 


To  face  p.  160. 


FRIENDS   IN   NEED  161 

Considerations  on  the  Book  of  Ecclesiastes ! " 
Her  friends  outside  had  shown  that  they  did 
not  forget  her,  and  this  may  have  helped  her 
to  dwell  with  equanimity  on  the  discouraging 
pessimism  of  King  Solomon.  A  few  weeks  after 
her  incarceration  the  Governor  entered  her  room, 
holding  in  his  hand  a  purse  full  of  gold,  and 
followed  by  a  man  who  was  carrying  a  bulky 
bundle.  The  bundle  contained  the  prisoner's 
clothes  sent  by  Monsieur  de  Valincourt ;  the  purse 
was  one  which  she  had  once  worked  for  that 
faithful  friend  and  which  he  was  now  returning 
well  filled.  The  generous  giver  did  not  stop  at 
that ;  he  obtained  from  the  Ministers  the  per- 
mission to  send  in  every  week,  a  large  open 
sheet,  one  side  of  which  was  filled  with  enquiries 
as  to  all  possible  wants  of  the  prisoner ;  on  the 
opposite  side,  the  Governor  wrote  down  the  "  yes  " 
or  "no  "  which  Mademoiselle  Delaunay  answered 
in  his  presence  to  each  point  of  interrogation. 

For  some  time  neither  mistress  nor  maid  could 
discover  which  of  the  Sceaux  conspirators  had  been 
brought  to  the  Bastille  after  them,  although  Rondel, 
the  only  one  of  the  two  who  possessed  "  a  pair  of 
eyes  useful  for  distances,"  was  very  vigilant  at  her 
post  of  observation,  a  tiny  grated  window  high  up 
in  the  wall  and  looking  over  the  entrance  court. 
From  there  she  gave  her  mistress  a  detailed 
report  of  all  newcomers.  At  last  one  day 


162  AT  THE  BASTILLE 

Mademoiselle  Delaunay  recognised  from  her  maid's 
description  the  strange  couple  with  whom  she  had 
been  "  bidden  to  still  stranger  feasts."  The  Abbe 
Lecamus  and  his  famished  countess  had  had  the 
honour  of  being  arrested  for  their  "  political 
offences,"  and  were  no  doubt  reckoning  with  a 
fair  degree  of  satisfaction  the  number  of  days 
during  which  they  might  hope  to  satisfy  their 
hunger  at  the  expense  of  the  Government. 

The  Marquis  de  Pompadour  was  seen  to  arrive 
soon  after,  with  the  escort  due  to  his  rank,  and 
was  safely  put  behind  lock  and  key  ;  but  there  was 
no   sign  yet   of  the   Comte   de   Laval.     At  last, 
Rondel  exclaimed  one  morning :  "  Here  is  the  man 
with  the  muzzle."   The  prisoners'  list  of  the  "  Spanish 
conspirators  "  was  now  complete,  and  contained  even 
some  "  supernumeraries " ;  men  who  had  had  no 
direct  connection  either  with  Sceaux  or  Cellamare, 
but  who  were  accused   of  private   dealings  with 
Spain.     Among  them  was  the  Due  de  Richelieu, 
who  was    gaily  adding    to    the    number   of   his 
seances  at  the  Bastille,  the  first   of  which,  when 
he  was  barely  eighteen,  had  won  him  much  admira- 
tion from  his  contemporaries.     There  were  others 
imprisoned,   less  gay  than    he,   amongst  them  a 
certain  Marquis  de  Bourdon,  an  old  country  squire, 
plunged  in  a  state  of  stupor  from  which  he  seemed 
unable  to  emerge.     A  letter  signed  by  him,  full  of 
the  most  ardent  protestations  of  loyalty  and  of  the 


CROSS-EXAMINATION  163 

most  generous  offers  of  help  had  been  found  among 
the  Due  du  Maine's  papers.  He  was  arrested, 
brought  to  Paris,  and  cross-examined ;  his  judges 
enquired  how  he  had  conceived  this  strong  attach- 
ment for  the  Due  du  Maine.  "  I  do  not  know  him," 
he  replied ;  "  I  have  never  seen  him,  or  His  Royal 
Highness  either."  "Why,  then,"  proceeded  the 
enquiry,  "  did  you  devote  yourself  entirely  to  the 
interests  of  this  Prince,  to  the  prejudice  of  those 
of  the  Regent."  "  Just  as  one  takes  sides  for  one 
player,  rather  than  for  another,  without  knowing 
why,"  was  the  reply,  and  no  further  explanation  could 
ever  be  extracted  from  this  unfortunate  sportsman. 

The  cross-examination  of  the  prisoners  had 
been  entrusted  to  Messieurs  d'Argenson  and 
Leblanc.  The  famous  Keeper  of  the  Seals  found 
it  very  difficult  on  this  occasion  to  uphold  his 
reputation  for  irresistible  eloquence  and  infallible 
discrimination.  Except  for  the  Abbe  Brigaut,  who 
gave  all  the  details  asked  of  him  and  a  great 
many  more  in  addition,  and  who  was  disconcerting 
through  his  very  loquacity,  all  the  prisoners  pre- 
served a  dogged  silence  or  succeeded  in  giving  a 
most  aggravating  air  of  candour  to  their  declara- 
tions of  innocence. 

Many  times  the  judges  had  to  return  to 
the  Bastille,  and,  by  means  of  Rondel's  eyes, 
Mademoiselle  Delaunay  watched  them  as  they 
crossed  the  entrance  court.  They  were  sometimes 


164  AT  THE   BASTILLE 

accompanied  by  the  notorious  Abbe  Dubois,  and 
then  "  one  might  have  fancied  indeed  that  one  was 
looking  at  Minos,  JEacus,  and  Rhadamanthus ! " 
she  exclaims.  The  two  women  who  had,  after 
the  manner  of  most  prisoners,  developed  to  its 
utmost  the  detective  instinct  which  gives  a  mean- 
ing to  the  smallest  trifle,  always  knew  of  the 
judges'  arrival  beforehand,  by  the  smoke  which 
filtered  through  the  floor  and  which  betrayed  the 
fact  that  the  fire  was  being  lighted  in  the  great 
hall,  which  served  for  the  cross-examination. 
The  Abbe  Dubois,  though  all-powerful  at  Court, 
was  not  admitted  into  the  judgment  room ;  his 
reputation  for  being  "a  madman  who  attacked 
everybody,"  his  propensity  for  hurling  people  down 
stairs  before  they  had  had  time  to  speak,  made  it 
probable  that  his  presence  would  be  a  hindrance 
in  the  path  of  justice.  During  the  legal  proceed- 
ings he  was  often  seen  pacing  up  and  down  the 
inner  courts  of  the  Bastille,  his  thin,  pointed  foxy 
face  distorted  by  impotent  rage  at  the  lengthiness 
of  the  sittings,  and  his  halting  voice,  hoarse  from 
continual  swearing,  raised  to  the  highest  pitch  of 
violent  altercation,  as  he  attacked  the  Governor 
of  the  Bastille  on  the  subject  of  the  prisoners' 
insubordination. 

Whenever  a  legal  interview  was  taking  place 
Mademoiselle  Delaunay  lay  with  her  ear  glued  to 
the  floor,  straining  every  nerve  to  catch  at  the 


DIVERS  WITNESSES  165 

meaning  of  what  was  going  on  below.  She  knew 
who  was  being  cross-examined,  as  the  prisoners 
could  be  seen  walking  across  the  court  which  led 
to  the  judgment  room,  and  although  no  distinct 
words  reached  her,  she  could  guess  the  character 
of  the  interview,  as  the  voices  rose  or  sank. 
Among  all  those  who  appeared  before  the  judges, 
the  best  equipped  for  resistance,  the  best  qualified 
by  experience  and  lightheartedness,  was  the  Due  de 
Richelieu.  After  seeing  all  their  best  methods 
fail,  d'Argenson  and  Leblanc  tried  to  defeat  him 
with  his  own  arms,  and  confronted  him  with  forged 
letters  supposed  to  come  from  a  princess  who  was 
not  insensible  to  his  passion.  Even  that  was  of 
no  avail ;  but  love,  which  had  not  succeeded  in 
causing  him  to  make  a  political  slip,  was  strong 
enough  to  procure  him  his  liberty,  after  a  com- 
paratively short  time.  The  name  of  the  person  at 
whose  bidding  his  prison  door  opened  was  whispered 
abroad,  and  it  was  not  the  name  of  the  Regent. 

The  Abbe  Brigaut  was  a  more  satisfactory 
subject  for  examination ;  every  day  he  would  find 
new  reasons  for  unburdening  his  soul,  and  then 
justify  this  Christian  duty  to  himself  in  edifying 
letters  addressed  to  the  relatives  of  those  he  had 
accused.  The  Marquis  de  Pompadour,  on  the  other 
hand,  preserved  an  unexpected  silence,  and  he  might 
perhaps  have  proved  a  hero  after  all  had  not  his 
colleague,  the  Comte  de  Laval,  been  arrested  at 

L2 


166  AT  THE   BASTILLE 

last.  The  judges,  working  on  the  probabilities 
suggested  by  the  close  partnership  of  the  two  men, 
carried  to  one  declarations  supposed  to  have  come 
from  the  other,  and  by  this  stratagem  brought 
about  the  defection  of  the  poor  Marquis.  It  was 
then  that  he  made  what  he  called  his  "  ingenuous  " 
confession.  He  talked  fast  and  long,  and  in  his 
anxiety  to  omit  nothing  of  what  he  knew,  he 
mentioned  among  other  things  the  fact  that 
"  Madame  du  Maine  interrupted  any  political 
discussion  as  soon  as  the  Due  du  Maine  appeared." 
This  detail  did  not  seem  to  gratify  the  judges,  who 
called  his  attention  to  the  fact  that  he  had  not  been 
asked  to  write  an  apology  of  the  Due  du  Maine ; 
in  short,  these  equitable  men  begged  him  to  retract 
his  injudicious  remark !  He  complied  with  alacrity  ; 
there  was  nothing  forthwith  that  he  could  refuse  to 
those  in  power  over  him,  and  so  it  was  only  just 
that  he  should  be  rewarded,  in  due  time,  with  a 
sum  of  40,000  livres,  which  he  pocketed  most 
readily. 

Monsieur  de  Laval  stood  firmly  by  his  oath 
"  not  to  mention  any  one's  name,"  but,  his  friend 
having  quoted  all  those  which  it  was  possible  to 
quote,  his  steadfastness  was  a  useless  sacrifice. 
His  spirit  remained  firm  nevertheless :  and  to 
keep  the  flesh  from  weakness  he  demanded  that 
he  should  have  medical  attention  at  least  twice 
a  day.  The  chemist's  bills  for  the  Bastille 


SUCCESSFUL  VERBAL  FENCING  167 

lengthened  considerably  under  his  patronage,  and 
the  Regent,  who  entered  into  every  detail  which 
concerned  the  prisoners,  was  one  day  perusing 
these  bills  with  the  Abbe  Dubois.  The  latter 
remonstrated  at  the  frequency  of  some  of  the 
remedies  administered,  but  the  Due  d'Orleans 
said,  with  a  humorous  smile :  "  Abbe\  as  these 
are  the  only  pleasures  they  have,  do  not  let  us 
curtail  them." 

Among  the  many  checks  experienced  by 
Messieurs  d'Argenson  and  Leblanc,  none  were 
more  aggravating  than  those  which  resulted  from 
Mademoiselle  Delaunay's  method  of  answering. 
Agility  was  the  very  essence  of  her  mind.  She 
knew  how  to  elude  a  question,  while  seeming  to 
answer  it  in  the  most  straightforward  manner, 
and  she  was  not  burdened  by  the  conscientious 
scruples  of  an  Abbe  Brigaut ;  on  the  contrary, 
she  was  convinced  that  "the  paths  of  deceit  are 
always  allowed  to  those  who  are  deprived  of  the 
natural  rights  of  society."  She  knew  that  it  is 
always  possible  so  to  divide  light  and  shade  that 
those  features  become  salient  which  one  wishes  to 
stand  out,  and  it  cost  her  no  struggle  to  decide  at 
the  beginning  of  each  interview  that  she  would 
"  only  tell  what  she  chose."  Moreover,  she  was 
saved  from  any  harrowing  grief  over  the  fate  of 
the  House  of  Maine  by  the  conviction  that 
"  Princes  always  manage  to  get  out  of  their 


168  AT  THE   BASTILLE 

difficulties."  Three  weeks  elapsed  before  her  first 
interrogatory  took  place.  She  had  had  plenty 
of  time  to  prepare  herself,  and  declares  that  she 
might  have  filled  a  volume  with  the  answers 
thought  out  beforehand.  None  served  her,  it 
seems ;  the  simplicity  of  the  first  questions  baffled 
her,  and  she  says  with  one  of  her  favourite 
authors:  "J'avais  reponse  a  tout,  hormis  a  qui 
va  la!" 

A  later  interview  with  her  judges  afforded 
her  more  scope  for  the  practice  of  her  theories. 
On  that  occasion  the  aggravating  serenity  of 
the  prisoner  decoyed  the  lawyer  into  a  quite 
unprofessional  fit  of  temper.  "You  know  the 
whole  business,"  he  exclaimed,  "  and  we  are 
determined  that  you  shall  speak,  or  else  you  will 
remain  in  the  Bastille  for  life."  "Sir,"  said 
Mademoiselle  Delaunay,  "this  might  certainly 
be  a  provision  worth  considering  for  a  spinster 
like  me." 


CHAPTER  XIV 

LOVE   AND   TREACHERY   WITHIN    PRISON    WALLS 

AN  indefinite  stay  in  the  Bastille  would,  in 
truth,  not  have  seemed  a  deplorable  fate  to 
Mademoiselle  Delaunay.  Her  material  comforts 
had  increased  from  month  to  month ;  to  keep 
up  her  health  and  her  spirits  there  were  walks 
in  the  courts  and  on  the  ramparts  of  the  prison, 
there  were  cheerful  dinners  followed  by  sociable 
"  coffee "  in  the  Governor's  apartments,  or  in  the 
room  of  one  or  the  other  of  the  prisoners.  News 
from  the  outside  world  began  also  by  degrees 
to  filter  through  the  prison  walls,  and  were  all 
the  more  valued  because  of  their  scarcity ;  they 
were  collected  carefully,  "shared  equally,  like 
the  booty  of  brigands,  and  feasted  upon  in 
the  common  den."  After  the  first  winter 
Mademoiselle  Delaunay's  room  had  been  done 
up  and  furnished  by  the  business  agents  of 
Monsieur  du  Maine.  It  looked  very  habitable, 
and  its  occupier  specially  appreciated  the  un- 
accustomed luxury  of  a  mantel-piece  where  she 

could  "put  down  a  book  or  a  snuff-box."     The 

169 


170  LOVE  AND  TREACHERY 

room  was  so  attractive  that  it  had  soon  become 
the  favourite  meeting  -  place  of  the  community, 
to  the  secret  annoyance  of  its  mistress,  who  was 
gradually  succumbing  to  an  enchanting  dream 
of  happiness,  in  which  one  person  only  did  not 
seem  an  intruder. 

The  Chevalier  du  Menil,  handsome,  generous, 
noble  -  minded  to  all  appearance,  loved  her,  or 
at  least  seemed  to  love  her,  and  she  believed  in 
his  whole-heartedness,  and  was  supremely  happy 
in  her  love  for  him.  Monsieur  de  Maisonrouge, 
a  blunt,  rough  soldier  in  appearance,  and  a  high- 
minded,  unselfish  friend  in  reality,  loved  her  also, 
and  though  she  did  not  love  him,  she  made  use 
of  him  to  increase  her  happiness,  for  he  was  the 
officer  in  charge,  and  ever  ready  to  grant  her 
slightest  wishes,  if  it  were  in  his  power. 

Monsieur  de  Maisonrouge,  having  his  own 
simple  conception  of  the  feminine  species,  had  first 
offered  a  stout  resistance  to  the  Governor's  sug- 
gestion that  he  should  go  and  see  Mademoiselle 
Delaunay  and  Mademoiselle  de  Montauban,  the 
only  two  women  of  note  whom  the  Sceaux 
conspiracy  had  brought  to  the  Bastille.  "What 
would  you  have  me  say  to  these  perouelles"  he 
had  objected,  "  who  will  do  nothing  but  scream 
and  weep  ? "  He  was  assured  that  they  were 
not  at  all  as  desperate  as  he  imagined,  and 
he  reluctantly  went  to  see  them.  The  bear  was 


MONSIEUR   DE   MAISONROUGE  171 

tamed ;  he  left  Mademoiselle  Delaunay's  room 
completely  subjugated,  and  from  that  day 
onwards  he  paid  her  most  gallant  attentions, 
striving  manfully  to  keep  up  with  what  he  felt 
to  be  her  very  dazzling  conversation — except  on 
the  occasions  when  she  happened  to  speak  on  the 
side  of  his  deaf  ear — for  he  had  been  much  too 
shy  to  confess  to  her  this  infirmity!  Through 
his  efforts,  all  kinds  of  little  favours  were  given 
to  Mademoiselle  Delaunay ;  she  felt  his  devotion 
surrounding  her  on  all  sides. 

"  He  is  the  only  man,"  she  says  of  him,  "  by 
whom  I  have  felt  that  I  was  truly  loved,  although 
it  has  happened  to  me,  as  it  does  to  all  women,  to 
find  several  men  who  have  shown  me  love.  This  one 
said  nothing  about  his  feelings,  and  I  think  I  knew 
of  them  long  before  he  did.  He  was  so  preoccupied 
with  the  thought  of  me  that  he  spoke  of  nothing 
else.  I  was  the  only  subject  of  his  conversations 
with  all  the  prisoners  whom  he  went  to  see ;  and 
he  was  simple-minded  enough  to  think  that  it 
was  they  who  constantly  spoke  of  me  to  him.  He 
came  back  to  me,  quite  delighted  with  the  pre- 
tended esteem  in  which  all  held  me.  'It  is 
astonishing,'  he  used  to  say  to  me,  *  how  they  all 
admire  you,  and  how  much  everybody  here  is 
interested  in  you ;  they  speak  of  you  constantly, 
and  I  can  go  nowhere  without  hearing  your 
praises.'  This  became  true  later  on,  when  they 
had  noticed  the  extreme  pleasure  which  it  gave 
him.  Being  dependent  on  people  produces 


172  LOVE  AND  TREACHERY 

flattery ;  captives  make  use  of  it  towards  their 
gaolers  as  courtiers  do  towards  their  sovereigns. 
Once  the  weak  point  of  De  Maisonrouge  had 
been  discovered,  people  under  him  bethought 
themselves  of  winning  his  goodwill  through 
pandering  to  his  weakness.  Some  began  to 
send  me  refreshments,  others  amusing  books ;  all 
of  them,  according  to  their  power,  paid  me  some 
sort  of  homage  which  always  passed  through 
him." 

It  was  thus  also  that  the  Chevalier  de  Menil 
came  into  Mademoiselle  Delaunay's  life. 

"  He  took  advantage,"  she  says  in  her  Memoirs, 
"of  a  dream  which  he  had  had,  or  pretended  to 
have  had,  in  order  to  pay  his  court  to  his  master. 
He  said  to  him  one  day  that  the  night  before 
he  had  dreamed  that  his  sentence  had  been 
passed  —  it  was  indeed  a  prisoner's  dream  —  and 
that  he  had  been  condemned  to  the  Bastille  for 
life,  in  company  with  me,  however,  who  was 
never  to  leave  prison  either  —  and  that  this 
circumstance  had  made  up  to  him  for  the 
severity  of  the  judgment.  This  seemed  to 
Maisonrouge  to  be  flattering  for  me,  coming 
from  one  who  had  never  seen  me,  and  the 
prospect  of  keeping  me  under  his  supervision 
for  ever  did  not  displease  him  either.  He  came 
to  me  at  once  to  regale  me  with  this  tale,  and 
1  don't  know  why  I  paid  more  attention  to  it 
than  I  usually  did  to  similar  things  which  he 
was  accustomed  to  say  to  me." 


THE   CHEVALIER  DE  MENIL  173 

By  the  law  of  premonitions  this  acquaintance 
which  had  hardly  begun  was  destined  to  be  of 
some  significance,  and  indeed  it  grew  quickly 
into  an  intimacy.  Simple,  good-natured  De 
Maisonrouge  helped  it  as  much  as  lay  in  his 
power,  unaware  as  yet  that  he  was  helping  to 
prepare  for  the  breaking  of  his  own  kind  heart 
in  the  very  near  future. 

"  He  went,"  as  the  Memoirs  say,  "  to  see  De 
Menil,  and  the  latter  having  mentioned  verses  in 
the  course  of  conversation.  '  You  ought  to  write 
some,'  he  said  to  him,  'just  to  amuse  your 
neighbour.'  His  room  was  opposite  mine.  '  That 
is  all  very  well,'  said  De  Menil,  '  but  how  ?  I  have 
neither  paper  nor  pen.'  '  If  that  is  the  only 
difficulty,'  rejoined  the  lieutenant,  '  here  is  a  pencil 
and  some  paper,  you  have  but  to  write.'  He 
wrote  some  verses  composed  very  hastily  on  a 
scrap  of  paper  which  Maisonrouge  brought  me, 
delighted  to  have  procured  this  new  diversion  for 
me.  '  To  make  it  still  better,'  he  said  to  me, 
'answer  in  the  same  vein,  I  shall  give  you  what 
you  want  to  write  with.'  This  beginning  of 
an  adventure  pleased  me  immensely.  I  was 
very  grateful  to  the  King's  lieutenant  for  his 
kindness.  Upon  my  answer  came  another  the 
next  day,  to  which  I  was  again  asked  to 
reply.  Maisonrouge,  seeing  nothing  in  this  joke 
which  could  be  of  any  concern  to  the  King 
or  the  State,  and  perceiving  that  I  took  great 
pleasure  in  it,  encouraged  us  to  go  on,  and 


174  LOVE   AND  TREACHERY 

we  were  delighted  to  do  so.  Our  poetry,  though 
it  was  mere  doggerel,  did  not  always  flow  very 
easily ;  I  insinuated  that  prose,  being  easier  to 
write,  would  be  more  agreeable.  The  lieutenant 
gave  his  consent  to  that  also,  in  the  kindness  of 
his  heart,  and  every  day  he  brought  an  open 
letter  and  carried  back  my  answer." 

If  De  Maisonrouge  had  at  that  time  been 
capable  of  logical  thinking,  he  would  have 
remembered  that  he  who  gives  his  little  finger 
will  soon  have  to  give  his  whole  arm ;  and  so 
it  happened  to  him  without  delay.  De  Menil 
began  to  feel  that  correspondence  was  insufficient 
and  that  conversation  would  be  more  satisfactory, 
and  though  Mademoiselle  Delaunay,  from  more 
or  less  romantic  reasons,  was  opposed  to  it,  an 
interview  was  arranged. 

"  Menil  was  very  curious  to  see  me,"  we  read 
in  the  Memoirs.  "He  spoke  of  it  from  time  to 
time  in  his  letters.  I  persisted  in  my  opinion 
that  the  charm  of  our  adventure  lay  in  our 
never  having  seen  each  other,  that  in  losing  this 
advantage,  it  would  become  commonplace,  far 
less  piquant,  and  that  our  relations  would  become 
strained.  In  spite  of  these  wise  representations, 
his  request  for  an  interview  became  more  and 
more  pressing.  At  last  De  Maisonrouge  showed 
us  to  each  other  by  placing  us  each  on  our  own 
doorstep.  We  both  felt  rather  abashed,  perhaps 
from  the  fact  that  we  felt  we  must  now  come 


TONGUE  -  TIED  175 

down  in  our  expectations.  We  said  nothing  to 
each  other — such  was  the  agreement  made — and, 
after  a  few  minutes,  we  both  disappeared.  The 
letters  which  followed  this  'apparition'  betrayed 
the  harm  it  had  done  to  our  prestige.  I  noticed 
it.  It  provided  me  with  some  new  subjects  for 
pleasantry;  we  had  exhausted  all  that  could  be 
made  out  of  our  first  relations ! 

"  Prisoners,  however,  are  not  people  to  get  easily 
discouraged.  The  Chevalier,  thinking  that  a  con- 
versation would  be  more  resourceful  than  this 
mere  glimpse  of  one  another,  represented  to  the 
lieutenant  that  the  favour  he  had  granted  was 
too  small,  that  this  could  not  be  called  seeing 
each  other,  that  getting  acquainted  meant  to 
talk  to  one  another;  at  last  he  wrung  from  him 
that  supreme  favour.  The  lieutenant  brought  him 
to  my  room  one  evening.  I  had  gone  to  bed, 
and  in  order  not  to  hinder  our  conversation,  he 
left  him  standing  at  my  pillow  and  went  to  the 
further  end  of  the  room  to  talk  to  Mademoiselle 
Rondel.  Renewed  embarrassment  took  hold  of 
us.  The  Chevalier,  like  Tonquin  d'Armorique, 
who,  after  he  had  found  his  love,  did  not  know 
what  in  the  world  to  say  to  her,  found  nothing 
to  say  to  me.  We  had  no  more  reason  to  be 
satisfied  with  each  other,  on  further  acquaint- 
ance, than  we  had  been  when  we  had  first  met. 
Maisonrouge,  noticing  that  our  conversation 
dragged,  came  forward  to  help  it  on.  It  went 
a  little  better  with  him;  but  was  altogether  so 
short  that  we  hardly  had  time  to  realise  each 
other." 


176  LOVE   AND  TREACHERY 

The  romance  was  in  danger  of  flagging; 
Mademoiselle  Delaunay  revived  its  fire  by  means 
of  a  little  feminine  ruse.  Whitsuntide  was 
approaching,  and  she  pretended  that  whilst  pre- 
paring for  it,  she  must  give  up  all  worldly 
diversions  and,  amongst  them,  her  correspon- 
dence. This  plan  did  not  meet  with  as  much 
objection  as  she  had  hoped. 

"I  was  extremely  piqued,"  she  owns,  "by  the 
small  resistance  offered  to  my  decision,  and  this 
feeling,  out  of  all  proportion  to  its  cause,  made 
me  fear  the  existence  of  an  even  more  serious 
sentiment.  This  apprehension,  added  to  my  pique, 
helped  me  to  keep  to  my  decision.  The  faithful 
Maisonrouge  still  remained  to  me,  more  assiduous, 
more  attached  and  less  favoured  than  ever." 

Indeed,  after  Whitsuntide  was  over,  he  even 
tried  to  make  up  for  past  renunciations  by  pro- 
posing that  the  Chevalier  and  Mademoiselle 
Delaunay  should  breakfast  together. 

"  We  took  tea  together,"  she  says,  "  with  a  certain 
air  of  unconcern.  Soon  after  that  De  Menil  dis- 
covered a  way  of  unlocking  his  own  door,  so  that 
interviews  could  take  place  even  without  De 
Maisonrouge's  intervention,  and  while  he  was 
having  supper  with  the  Governor  of  the  Bastille, 
innocent  of  any  suspicion,  conversations  could  be 
carried  on  in  peace  until  the  clanking  of  the  sentinel's 
picket  upon  the  pavement  of  the  courtyard  warned 
the  prisoners  that  the  lieutenant  was  returning." 


A  DESPERATE   SITUATION  177 

That  which  was  bound  to  happen  sooner  or 
later,  happened  one  evening  when  Mademoiselle 
Delaunay  imprudently  insisted  on  keeping  De 
Menil  a  little  later  than  usual;  the  turnkeys, 
whose  suspicions  had  been  roused,  came  round 
earlier  than  was  their  custom,  locked  the  doors, 
and  took  the  keys  to  the  lieutenant. 

"  I  could  not  describe,"  exclaims  Mademoiselle 
Delaunay, "  the  utter  dismay  I  felt  when  I  heard  the 
keys  turn  in  the  lock.  What  decision  was  I  to  take 
under  such  fatal  circumstances  ?  The  only  thing 
which  I  saw  clearly  was  that  the  Chevalier  de 
Menil  must  not  remain  locked  up  in  my  room. 
To  be  found  with  me  during  the  day  time  would 
only  have  been  the  breach  of  a  rule,  of  a  local 
custom,  but  to  spend  the  night  in  my  room 
would  have  meant  a  scandal  in  any  country. 
And  how  was  I  to  get  him  out?  The  doors 
were  barricaded  in  such  a  way  that  nothing 
could  be  attempted  there.  The  windows  were 
not  more  accessible.  There  remained  to  me  no 
other  resource  than  the  mercy  of  poor  Maison- 
rouge  who  would  be  grievously  offended  by  this. 
At  last  I  armed  myself  with  all  the  courage 
that  was  necessary  on  an  occasion  so  pressing, 
and  I  waited  at  my  window  for  his  return 
from  the  Governor's  rooms,  where  he  was 
supping. 

"As  soon  as  he  entered  the  courtyard,  I  called  to 
him  and  asked  him  to  come  in  to  say  good-night. 
He  ran  to  his  rooms  to  fetch  down  my  keys  and 

M 


178  LOVE   AND   TREACHERY 

came  to  me,  beside  himself  with  joy  at  this 
unaccustomed  favour.  I  went  up  to  him — his 
rival,  who  was  standing  in  the  background,  was 
yet  hidden  from  his  view.  I  said  to  him  in  a 
most  embarrassed  manner :  '  You  taught  your 
neighbour  the  way  to  my  apartments ;  he  has 
very  indiscreetly  taken  it  without  your  help. 
Meanwhile  they  have  locked  us  in,  you  would 
not,  I  am  sure,  leave  him  here  with  me,  rid  me 
of  him,  I  beseech  you  1 '  At  the  first  word  I 
uttered,  he  caught  sight  of  the  Chevalier  de 
M£nil,  and  his  expression  changed.  The  air  of 
gaiety  which  he  had  had  on  coming  in,  gave  place 
to  the  utmost  gloom,  and  he  said  to  us  very 
curtly  that  this  put  him  into  a  very  awkward 
position,  that  he  could  not  fetch  Monsieur  de  Menil's 
keys,  come  down  again,  and  open  his  room  without 
attracting  the  notice  of  his  servants,  and  giving 
rise  to  suspicions  which  would  be  as  detrimental 
to  me  as  they  would  be  to  him.  I  owned  that 
he  had  reason  to  complain  of  our  imprudence.  I 
confessed  that  I  was  in  the  wrong,  and  promised 
not  to  transgress  again ;  I  implored  his  friendship 
as  my  only  resource.  He  left  me  without  further 
comment,  went  to  fetch  the  keys,  came  back  to 
take  away  De  M£nil  who  was  more  disconcerted 
than  any  of  us,  locked  him  into  his  room,  and 
did  not  return  to  mine." 

This  unpleasant  adventure  ought  to  have 
cured  the  two  of  their  temerity,  but  it  was 
to  be  foreseen  that  it  would  not.  They  were 
caught  again,  arid  this  time  with  more  serious 


CAUGHT  AGAIN  179 

consequences.       The    Memoirs     relate     this     as 
follows : — 

"  One  day,  when  we  thought  ourselves  more 
secure  than  ever  because  the  lieutenant  had  gone 
to  dine  at  Vincennes  with  the  Marquis  du 
Chatelet,  his  friend  and  former  colonel,  Monsieur 
Leblanc  came  to  the  Bastille  to  say  to  the  Governor 
that  he  needed  some  explanation  in  reference  to 
a  declaration  imputed  to  the  Chevalier  de  Menil, 
and  that  he  must  see  him  about  it  at  once.  The 
Governor,  who  was  at  dinner,  left  the  table,  and 
ran  with  such  speed  to  fetch  De  Menil  that  the 
latter,  who  was  with  me  when  we  became  aware 
that  the  Governor  was  going  to  his  room,  had 
not  time  to  get  there  before  him.  The  Governor 
did  not  find  him  there,  but  Menil  joined  him 
quickly  enough  to  face  the  whole  outburst  of 
his  anger  of  which  the  echoes  only  reached  me. 
After  his  access  of  fury  was  over,  he  gave  the 
Minister's  message,  and  carried  the  answer  to 
him  without  saying  anything  of  what  had  just 
happened,  and  for  which  his  lack  of  vigilance 
would  have  been  made  responsible.  But  as  soon 
as  Monsieur  Leblanc  had  gone,  he  ordered  the 
Chevalier  de  Menil  to  be  transferred  to  one  of  the 
towers  and  lodged  in  a  kind  of  cell  which  was  very 
far  away  from  my  apartment.  The  severity  of 
this  treatment,  and  the  unpleasant  construction 
which  could  be  put  on  so  hurried  a  removal,  over- 
whelmed me  with  dismay.  Contrary  to  my  custom 
I  gave  myself  up  to  tears  and  to  despair.  Never 
had  a  feeling  as  desperate  as  this  filled  my  heart ;  I 
felt  as  if  my  very  soul  had  been  torn  out  of  me." 


180  LOVE   AND  TREACHERY 

This  last  sentence  marks  very  fairly  the  degree 
of  intensity  to  which  Mademoiselle  Delaunay's 
passion  had  risen  during  the  few  months  which 
had  elapsed.  She  had  begun  by  carefully  guarding 
against  emotional  surprises  ;  she  had  even,  after 
De  MeniFs  first  protestations  of  love,  written  a 
very  wise  and  very  well-balanced  letter,  in  which 
she  had  said  that  to  listen  to  these  would  be 
to  disavow  the  principles  on  which  her  whole 
life  had  been  built  up,  and  that  she  did  not  wish 
to  add  to  the  misfortunes  which  Fate  had  put 
upon  her— those  into  which  her  own  imprudence 
might  drive  her,  and  which  would  be  all  the 
more  felt  because  she  would  be  entirely  responsible 
for  them.  This  letter  had  not  meant  more  than 
do  most  of  its  kind  in  similar  circumstances; 
prudence  had  written,  but  passion  acted  with 
total  disregard  of  this,  and  when  it  seemed  needful, 
Mademoiselle  Delaunay  proved  her  inconsistency 
by  rousing  jealousy  in  her  swain,  with  a  feeling  of 
quite  natural  elation.  There  was  not  only  faith- 
ful De  Maisonrouge  to  be  used  as  an  instrument 
on  those  occasions,  but  also  the  famous  Due  de 
Richelieu,  whose  windows  were  exactly  opposite 
hers,  and  who  loved  to  while  away  his  time  with 
a  little  aerial  conversation.  His  lightheartedness 
was  proverbial,  as  was  the  procession  of  carriages 
which  could  be  seen  advancing  towards  the  Bastille 
on  the  days  when  the  Due  was  known  to  take 


THE   DUC   DE   RICHELIEU  181 

his  walks  on  the  ramparts.  The  carriages  filled 
the  whole  length  of  the  street  from  the  Porte 
Saint  Antoine  to  the  moats  of  the  prison ;  and  it 
was  a  rather  piquant  spectacle  to  see  women,  who 
bitterly  hated  each  other  for  their  rivalry  in  the 
Due's  affections,  meet  that  day,  in  a  common 
effort  to  catch  a  distant  glimpse  of  the  careless 
cavalier.  Some  women  were  there  who  had  been 
the  Regent's  mistresses,  and  whom  he  had  im- 
pudently stolen  from  his  sovereign ;  Mademoiselle 
de  Valois,  the  Regent's  own  daughter,  and 
Mademoiselle  de  Charolais  were  there.  It  was 
even  whispered  that  they  had  disguised  them- 
selves as  women  of  the  common  people  to  go 
and  see  Richelieu  at  the  Bastille. 

Between  times,  this  irresistible  conqueror  had 
to  content  himself  with  what  the  Bastille  itself 
could  offer,  and  he  had  discovered,  without  diffi- 
culty, that  Mademoiselle  Delaunay  was  amusing. 
One  day,  among  others,  he  helped  in  his  careless 
way  to  rouse  useful  jealousy  in  the  Chevalier  de 
Menil's  heart. 

"  One  evening  Maisonrouge  had  brought  me  the 
contents  of  his  hunter's  bag,"  says  Mademoiselle 
Delaunay,  "  and  he  was  supping  with  me  when 
Menil,  who  had  discovered  how  to  unlock  his  door, 
came  and  listened  at  mine.  He  pretended  after- 
wards that  I  had  been  very  gay,  and  that  I  had 
spoken  of  him  with  a  lightheartedness  which  was 


182  LOVE   AND  TREACHERY 

offensive.  But  what  displeased  him  still  more  was, 
that  on  leaving  the  table,  and  as  it  was  extremely 
hot,  we  sat  down  at  the  window.  The  lieutenant 
asked  me  to  sing.  I  began  a  scene  from  the  opera, 
Iphigenia.  The  Due  de  Richelieu,  who  was  at  his 
window  also,  sang  the  responses  of  Orestes  in  this 
scene,  which  was  exactly  suited  to  our  circum- 
stances ;  Maisonrouge,  who  thought  that  it  would 
amuse  me,  let  us  finish  the  whole  scene.  It  did  not 
amuse  the  Chevalier  de  Menil  at  all.  The  next 
day,  in  his  letters,  he  asked  questions  about  the 
conversation  at  supper;  I  did  not  know  that  he 
had  listened  to  it.  I  had  forgotten  that  we  had 
mentioned  him  at  all,  and  I  said  nothing  about 
this  to  him.  He  construed  it  as  the  making  of 
a  mystery,  about  which  he  was  so  outrageously 
angry  that  he  wanted  me  to  break  off  all  inter- 
course with  De  Maisonrouge." 

This  request  was  hardly  necessary,  for  poor  De 
Maisonrouge  was  becoming  of  less  and  less 
account.  Rondel,  Mademoiselle  Delaunay's  maid, 
was  first  employed  to  carry  some  of  the  letters 
between  the  two  correspondents,  some  turnkeys 
were  won  over  by  De  Menil  to  perform  the  same 
offices,  and  in  their  case  there  was  no  point  of 
delicacy  which  demanded  the  letters  to  be  sent 
open ;  finally,  as  the  months  went  on,  Madame  de 
Pompadour's  intercessions  with  the  Regent  obtained 
full  liberty  of  intercourse  between  all  the  con- 
spirators which  were  still  at  the  Bastille.  This  was 
the  final  blow  for  poor  De  Maisonrouge ;  but  the  day 


ARMAND   DU    PLESSIS, 
Due  DE  RICHELIEU. 


To  /ace  p.  182. 


EXIT  DE  MAISONROUGE  183 

on  which  the  new  liberties  were  first  enjoyed  left  an 
indelible  impression  on  Mademoiselle  Delaunay. 
She  describes  it  in  her  Memoirs,  with  all 
details. 

"  When  I  was  least  expecting  it,"  she  says,  "  I 
saw  De  Menil  enter  my  room,  without  any  pre- 
cautions. I  was  surprised  and  afraid  ;  he  reassured 
me  by  announcing  to  me  the  happy  news.  I  was 
overwhelmed  with  joy  in  .spite  of  the  sadness  I 
felt  at  my  sister's  death,  the  circumstances  of  which 
had  filled  my  heart  with  great  bitterness.  It  must 
be  owned,  to  the  shame  of  natural  feeling,  that 
nature's  voice  is  hardly  heard  when  passion  speaks 
at  the  same  time. 

"  Messieurs  de  Pompadour  et  de  Boisdavis  came 
in  a  little  later  to  congratulate  me  on  the  increase 
of  conviviality.  The  King's  lieutenant  had  gone 
to  dine  at  Vincennes  on  that  day;  on  his  return 
he  came  to  me,  ignorant  still  of  what  had  been 
granted  to  the  Chevalier  de  Menil.  When  he  saw 
him  in  my  room,  in  such  good  company,  and  with 
every  appearance  of  having  a  right  to  be  there, 
he  remained  thunderstruck,  speechless  and  motion- 
less. I  was  touched  by  his  grief,  and,  going  up  to 
him,  I  told  him  that  Madame  de  Pompadour 
had  obtained  permission  for  us  all  to  see  each 
other.  He  had  known  that  she  was  petitioning 
for  this,  but  he  had  not  believed  that  it  would 
come  so  soon.  He  said  to  us,  in  rather  forced 
tones,  that  it  was  but  meet  and  right  and  that  he 
congratulated  us  upon  this,  but  he  could  not  utter 
one  other  word,  and  remained  glued  to  the  seat  he 


184  LOVE   AND  TREACHERY 

had  taken,  like  one  petrified.  The  gaiety  of  the 
assembly  put  the  last  touch  to  his  confusion,  and 
not  being  able  to  stand  so  painful  a  situation,  he 
left  us." 

There  was  a  final  explanation  between  the  two 
a  little  later,  so  high-minded  and  generous  on  the 
part  of  De  Maisonrouge  that  his  heroism  deserves 
to  be  quoted. 

"  My  dear  friend,"  he  said,  "  you  are  happy  now. 
I  had  wished  for  it,  but  your  happiness  costs  dear 
to  my  heart.  Live  in  peace  with  one  who  is  dear 
to  you,  but  do  not  ask  me  to  witness  it.  As  long 
as  I  could  be  of  any  help  to  you  I  overcame  my 
repugnance  by  inconceivable  efforts ;  I  should  do 
it  still  if  it  could  be  of  any  use  to  you ;  but  you 
no  longer  have  need  of  me.  Allow  me  henceforth 
to  come  to  you  only  when  propriety  or  some 
service  which  I  may  still  be  able  to  render  you 
will  demand  it  of  me.  ...  I  sacrifice  myself  un- 
reservedly to  your  happiness ;  may  the  man  who 
is  to  give  it  to  you  be  as  faithful  and  as  devoted 
to  you  as  I  am." 

Happiness  is  generous  of  small  gifts. 

"I  insisted,"  says  Mademoiselle  Delaunay, 
"on  his  continuing  to  see  me,  and  I  won  my 
point.  I  promised  him  to  keep  out  of  his  sight 
anything  that  might  wound  him  ;  and  I  was  careful 
that  he  should  not  meet  the  Chevalier  de  Menil 
when  he  came  to  my  room,  which  was  very 


rare." 


INCONVENIENT  POPULARITY  185 

She  was  not  always  equally  tolerant  of  society. 

"  I  was  much  annoyed,"  she  owns,  "  by  the  easy 
access  to  my  room  granted  to  the  people  whom  I 
looked  upon  with  indifference.  They  did  not  look 
upon  me  in  the  same  way,  and  this  increased  my 
annoyance.  If,  as  a  good  author  has  said,  even  a 
gardener  is  a  man  in  the  eyes  of  nuns,  a  woman, 
whatever  she  may  be,  is  a  goddess  in  the  eyes  of 
prisoners.  Ours  did  certainly  dedicate  a  kind  of 
worship  to  me ;  but  their  vows  and  their  incense 
often  nearly  suffocated  me.  .  .  .  They  all  assembled 
in  my  room  so  continually  that  I  was  often  beside 
myself  and  so  bad  tempered  that  Menil  reprimanded 
me  severely,  without  any  consideration  for  the 
cause  of  my  annoyance,  which  deserved  much  in- 
dulgence on  his  part." 

These  disadvantages  were  a  small  price  to  pay, 
for  the  happiness  which  filled  her. 

"  I  wished,"  she  says,  "  for  no  other  liberty  than 
that  which  I  enjoyed ;  it  seemed  to  me  that  no 
other  world  existed  outside  my  prison  walls.  It 
is  the  only  happy  time  I  ever  spent  in  my  life. 
I  could  not  have  believed  that  happiness  would 
attend  me  there,  and  that  everywhere  else  I 
should  seek  for  it  in  vain  !  Every  one  awaited 
with  avidity  the  news  which  should  announce 
our  speedy  liberation.  I  pretended,  in  order  to 
save  my  dignity,  to  desire  it  like  the  others, 
although  at  the  bottom  of  my  heart  I  was  far 
from  wishing  it." 

Had  she    known   the    disillusionments   which 


186  LOVE   AND  TREACHERY 

would  attend  her  days  of  liberty,  she  would  have 
wished  still  more  fervently  for  indefinite  imprison- 
ment. De  Menil,  in  whom  she  believed  so  implicitly, 
whom  she  had  made  the  centre  of  her  universe,  was 
even  then  planning  for  himself  a  successful  future 
in  which  she  was  to  have  no  part. 


CHAPTER   XV 

RELEASE   OF   THE   SCEAUX    CONSPIRATORS 

As  time  went  on  the  little  company  of  Sceaux 
conspirators  dwindled  away ;  more  and  more 
frequently  the  prison  gates  opened  and  let  out 
those  who  had  confessed.  The  first  to  go  were 
Mademoiselle  de  Montauban,  young  Monsieur  de 
Malezieu,  and  Barjeton,  one  of  the  lawyers  who  had 
been  employed  by  the  Duchesse  du  Maine.  His 
colleague  Davisard  had  to  wait  considerably 
longer,  and  to  him  waiting  was  a  torture.  This 
man  of  whom  it  was  said  that  it  was  easier  for  him 
to  be  in  several  places  at  the  same  time  than  to  be 
in  the  same  place  for  any  length  of  time,  at  last 
fretted  himself  into  a  serious  illness.  It  brought 
him  his  release ;  the  Regent  had  no  wish  to  let 
any  one  cheat  him  by  dying  in  prison,  and  he  sent 
an  order  to  set  the  prisoner  free.  "  Isn't  this  a 
hoax  ? "  said  Davisard,  from  the  depths  of  his  bed, 
when  he  saw  the  lettre  de  cachet.  "  No,"  said  the 
Governor,  "it  is  genuine."  "My  stockings,  my 
breeches,  quick,  quick,"  said  the  prisoner,  hurling 
himself  out  of  bed.  His  dressing,  his  departure, 
his  cure,  all  was  effected  in  one  brief  moment ! 

187 


188          RELEASE   OF  THE  CONSPIRATORS 

Monsieur  de  Malezieu  was,  of  all  the  con- 
spirators, in  the  most  critical  position ;  it  was 
impossible  for  him  to  deny  his  partnership  in  the 
fatal  letter,  the  pasted  pieces  of  which  proclaimed 
his  guilt  beyond  refutation,  and  yet  he  maintained 
a  dogged  silence  which  drove  his  judges  to  the  last 
limits  of  exasperation.  At  last  a  rumour  began 
to  spread  that  he  was  to  be  removed  to  the  Con- 
ciergerie  and  executed  after  a  very  summary  trial. 

Madame  du  Maine  was  much  affected  by  the 
news,  and  she  herself  was  not  bearing  with  much 
philosophy  what  she  termed  the  "horrors  of  her 
lonely  captivity."  She  had  a  maid-of -honour, 
a  lady-in-waiting,  a  chaplain,  a  doctor,  and  five 
waiting- women  ;  but,  as  Mademoiselle  Delaunay 
remarks,  "princes  feel  lonely  unless  they  are  in 
a  crowd."  As  to  "horrors,"  she  had  found 
Dijon  damp,  and  she  had  been  allowed  to 
move  to  Chalons.  Chalons  seeming  to  her  damp 
also,  and  of  objectionable  architecture,  the  Regent 
had  given  her  a  choice  between  two  country- 
houses  in  the  neighbourhood.  But  in  spite  of 
this  Madame  du  Maine  declared  every  day  that 
she  was  a  victim  of  the  most  cruel,  unfair,  and 
rigorous  measures.  Madame,  the  Regent's  mother, 
says  that  "  she  played  cards  and  beat  her  en- 
tourage alternately  "  all  day  long ;  but  it  is  hardly 
probable  that  her  versatile  mind  could  have  been 
satisfied  with  such  a  limited  range  of  occupations. 


THE   DUCHESSE   RESTLESS  189 

What  is  quite  certain  is  that  she  made  the  most 
of  a  pathetic  situation.  She  played  cards  "  sadly  " 
with  her  attendants,  and  interrupted  herself  now 
and  again  to  exclaim  with  dramatic  melancholy: 
"Let  the  Regent  judge  of  my  pains  by  my 
pleasures  ! "  She  was  as  fond  as  ever  of  classical 
quotations,  and  when  she  declared  more  or  less 
opportunely,  "Aux  fureurs  de  Junon,  Jupiter 
m'abandonne,"  the  tender-lrearted  La  Billarderie, 
unused  to  classical  lore,  would  fall  a  prey  to 
profound  and  puzzled  despair. 

As  the  months  passed  the  Duchesse  grew 
weary  of  her  role  of  "  Orlando  Furioso,"  to  quote 
Madame  again,  and  she  yearned  to  obtain  her 
liberty  at  any  price.  Monsieur  de  Malezieu's 
unflinching  spirit  was  now  the  only  obstacle  in 
her  path ;  it  piqued  her  pride  and  she  felt  that 
she  could  not  stoop  to  a  confession,  before  he 
had  yielded.  The  Regent,  on  his  side,  was 
more  than  wishful  to  bring  to  an  end  a  business 
which  had  entailed  endless  trouble,  yet  he  also 
desired  to  see  his  honour  safe  and  his  dealings 
justified  by  a  full  confession  of  the  culprits. 
At  this  juncture,  Madame  la  Princesse,  who,  in 
the  beginning  of  her  daughter's  troubles,  had 
been  forced  to  exercise  more  energy  and  initiative 
than  she  had  ever  shown  before,  decided  to 
ascertain  the  calibre  of  Monsieur  de  Malezieu's 
resisting  power.  It  was  a  difficult  task,  the 


190         RELEASE   OF  THE  CONSPIRATORS 

most  contradictory  rumours  being  circulated  on 
that  subject ;  but  at  last  it  was  declared  to 
Madame  du  Maine,  on  the  best  authority,  that 
the  citadel  had  fallen.  The  faithful  La  Billarderie 
brought  this  good  news,  and  the  truth  of  it 
was  attested  by  Madame  la  Princesse  and  many 
others  who  were  anxious  to  bring  about  a 
favourable  dJnoument. 

The  Duchesse  was  wise  enough  not  to  enquire 
too  much  into  the  strict  truth  of  this  statement ; 
she  sat  down  without  demurring,  and  wrote  a 
most  detailed  confession  of  her  doings  "in  order," 
as  we  are  told,  "to  prove  her  sincerity."  Before 
there  had  been  time  to  read  the  document  to  the 
Council  of  the  Regency,  the  courier,  who  had 
carried  it  to  the  Regent,  brought  back  the  lettre 
de  cachet  which  set  Madame  du  Maine  free.  She 
received  it  with  transports  of  joy;  only  one 
unexpected  clause  in  it — the  stipulation  that 
she  should  reside  at  Sceaux — caused  her  some 
disappointment. 

Monsieur  le  Due  du  Maine  was  released  about 
the  same  time  as  the  Duchesse,  in  January  1720. 
From  the  day  of  his  arrest  he  had  kept  up 
consistently  his  attitude  of  a  frightened  hare, 
startled  at  each  unexplained  noise,  shrinking 
from  all  unfamiliar  sights.  Each  time  his  prison 
door  opened,  he  expected  to  see  the  executioner 
with  his  fatal  axe.  He  steadfastly  repudiated 


A   FRANK  CONFESSION  191 

any  connection  with  his  wife's  imprudent  dealings, 
and  the  testimonies  of  all  those  concerned  tallied 
entirely  with  his  declarations.  "  Monsieur  le  Due 
du  Maine  was  not  advised  of  this,"  "  Monsieur  le 
Due  du  Maine  was  carefully  kept  in  ignorance 
of  the  measures  taken,"  are  sentences  which 
constantly  recur  in  the  evidence  given.  The 
Duchesse's  emphatic  declarations  on  that  subject 
provoked  a  general  smile,  "when  they  were  read 
aloud  before  the  Council  of  the  Regency. 

The  Due  d'Orleans  was  quite  safe  in  giving 
back  their  liberty  to  his  formidable  opponents; 
at  the  beginning  of  the  year  1720  there  were 
very  few  people  who  took  them  seriously. 

The  conspiracy  of  Sceaux,  or  rather  the  leisure 
for  reflection  which  it  afforded  to  the  conspirators 
during  their  incarceration,  had  one  unexpected 
consequence.  While  simulating  the  broken  reed 
in  his  prison  of  Dourlens,  the  Due  du  Maine  was 
in  reality  steeling  himself  to  the  most  momentous 
decision  of  his  life.  One  of  Madame's  remarks 
gives  us  a  clue  to  the  situation.  "  The  Due  du 
Maine,"  she  declares,  "has  written  to  his  sister: 
'  It  is  not  into  prison,  but  into  a  strait  waistcoat 
that  they  ought  to  have  put  me,  for  having  thus 
allowed  myself  to  be  led  by  the  nose.'"  The 
Due  du  Maine  was  meditating  upon  the  ad- 
visability of  a  legal  separation  from  his  turbulent 
wife  !  He  feared  the  extravagance  of  her  expenses 


192         RELEASE  OF  THE   CONSPIRATORS 

as  much  as  the  waywardness  of  her  caprices, 
and  at  last  he  resolved  to  repair  to  Clagny,  one 
of  his  country  seats,  and  from  this  safe  and 
distant  shelter  to  open  negotiations  with  Sceaux. 

Public  rumour  was  apprised  of  this  earlier 
than  Madame  du  Maine,  but  no  one  dared  break 
to  her  the  news  of  such  an  astounding  defection. 
She  was  journeying  by  slow  stages  from  her 
Burgundy  residence  towards  Sceaux,  in  her  own 
carriages,  which  had  been  sent  to  meet  her 
by  order  of  the  Regent;  and  at  each  posting 
station  she  had  expected  to  find  her  husband  in 
readiness,  eager  to  take  upon  himself  the  familiar 
yoke.  But  disappointment  followed  upon  dis- 
appointment, and  the  members  of  her  escort  were 
groaning  under  the  necessity  of  finding  evasive 
answers  to  her  pressing  questions,  when,  to  their 
relief,  an  imprudent  postmaster  at  Fontainebleau 
revealed  the  truth. 

Madame  du  Maine,  says  Mademoiselle 
Delaunay,  "was  seized  with  astonishment  and 
indignation  at  this  news,  and  wanted  to  have  an 
immediate  explanation.  Bad  luck  being  very 
persistent  in  the  choice  of  its  victims,  this 
delicate  business  fell  to  the  lot  of  poor,  faithful 
La  Billarderie,  who  floundered  even  more  than 
usual,  and  patiently  bowed  his  head  under  the 
storm  which  his  explanations  raised." 

Another  painful  surprise  awaited  Madame  du 


FRIENDLESS  SOLITUDE  193 

Maine  at  Sceaux ;  she  found  her  old  residence 
a  desolate  solitude,  none  of  her  friends  were 
there  to  greet  her,  not  even  one  member  of  her 
family,  although  she  had  been  given  the  formal 
assurance  that  she  would  find  her  children  there 
on  her  arrival.  She  was  informed  that  the  right 
to  allow  access  to  Sceaux  rested  with  Madame 
la  Princesse,  her  mother.  The  crafty  Regent 
had  in  this  way  prolonged  the  chastisement, 
while  seeming  to  retain  no  responsibility  in  the 
matter,  and  he  had  every  reason  to  think  that 
his  deputy  had  been  far  too  terror  -  stricken 
by  recent  events  not  to  be  over-strict  in  the 
exercise  of  her  duties.  Under  this  new  regime 
at  Sceaux  Madame  du  Maine  must  have  felt  at 
times  as  if  she  had  gone  back  to  the  old  tyranny 
of  her  childish  days,  only  —  and  therein  lay  the 
ignominy  of  the  situation — she  was  now  forty- 
five,  and  her  mentor  bore  the  features  of  her 
meek,  affrighted  little  mother. 

The  Due  du  Maine's  fine  resistance  lasted  just 
six  months.  As  long  as  he  remained  firm  in  his 
refusal  to  see  his  wife,  the  danger  of  a  surrender 
on  his  part  was  comparatively  small ;  his  position 
was  impregnable;  he  had  plenty  of  grounds 
for  his  decision,  and  the  conditions  he  proposed 
were  most  fair.  Foremost  among  them  was  an 
offer  to  pay  his  wife,  out  of  his  considerable 
fortune,  a  yearly  pension,  in  return  for  the  privilege 

N 


194         RELEASE   OF  THE   CONSPIRATORS 

of  being  allowed  to  live  in  peace.  The  Duchesse, 
however,  would  have  none  of  these  negotiations. 
She  hurried  impatiently  through  the  endless  letters 
he  sent,  and  never  wavered  in  her  conviction  that 
she  could  easily  pull  down  this  laborious  edifice 
of  resistance,  if  only  she  could  gain  access  to 
the  rebel. 

An  interview  was  effected  at  last,  and  its  easily 
foreseen  result  was  that  the  Due  du  Maine  put 
away  his  artillery  of  war,  his  pens,  and  his  papers, 
and  returned  obediently  to  his  old  haunts  and  his 
useful  occupations.  His  favourite,  isolated  turret 
saw  him  again  at  work  on  his  accounts,  which 
were  in  sad  need  of  his  care.  He  was  submissive 
as  ever ;  in  one  thing  only  did  he  remain  obdurate. 
Monsieur  de  Malezieu,  though  pardoned  by  the 
Regent,  should  not  return  to  Sceaux,  nor  were 
any  of  those  who  had  even  the  most  distant 
likeness  to  conspirators  to  cross  its  threshold. 

It  was  a  sad  year  which  the  Duchesse  du 
Maine  spent  from  January  to  December  1720. 
Her  days  were  empty,  her  life  was  disorganised, 
her  mind  unoccupied ;  her  reputation  for  being 
a  bel-esprit  was  in  great  danger ;  there  was  nothing 
left  to  her  to  stimulate  her  wits,  except  an  un- 
ending correspondence  with  her  "Oracle,"  whom 
the  Due  du  Maine  had  installed  at  a  safe  distance 
in  one  of  his  country  houses.  The  Cardinal  de 
Polignac,  in  his  exile  at  the  abbey  of  Anchin, 


THE  PRUDENT  CARDINAL  195 

preserved  an  injured  and  prudent  silence,  nursing 
many  grudges ;  his  manuscript  of  the  Anti- 
Lucrece,  seized  with  other  papers  at  Madame  du 
Maine's,  had  not  been  returned  to  him  for  a  long 
time,  and  he  had  not  forgotten  yet  the  anxieties 
he  had  suffered  on  that  account.  So  great  was 
the  caution  which  he  had  sworn  to  observe 
thenceforth,  that  he  shrank  with  physical  repug- 
nance, even  from  a  copy  of  Madame  du  Maine's 
"  Declaration  to  the  Regent "  sent  by  her  for  his 
perusal.  He  would  have  nothing  to  do  with 
seditious  writings,  and  it  was  only  after  his 
secretary  had  vouched  for  the  harmlessness  of  the 
said  document,  that  he  could  get  reconciled  to  the 
idea  of  having  received  it  at  all.  His  prudence 
never  forsook  him  —  he  even  avoided  social 
functions  at  which  he  was  likely  to  meet  his 
former  "  Circe,"  and  once  only,  on  the  eve  of  his 
departure  for  Rome,  a  safely  distant  residence, 
did  he  appear  at  Sceaux  again  to  make  warm 
protestations  of  friendship.  From  that  day  he 
was  lost  for  good  to  Madame  du  Maine,  who 
never  heard  from  him  again. 

Six  months  elapsed  before  Mademoiselle 
Delaunay  was  allowed  to  leave  her  prison  and  to 
return  to  Sceaux.  The  Regent  had  been  heard 
to  exclaim  that  she  should  be  made  to  speak  like 
all  the  others,  but  after  sixteen  months  in  the 
Bastille  she  was  as  elusive  as  ever  in  her  answers, 


196        RELEASE  OF  THE  CONSPIRATORS 

as  ready  with  her  teasing  methods.  A  few  days 
before  her  release,  the  Governor  sent  her  the 
intimation  that  Monsieur  Leblanc  was  waiting  for 
her  declaration. 

"I  answered,"  she  reports,  "that  I  did  not 
know  what  he  meant  by  a  'declaration,'  that  I 
had  only  met  with  such  things  in  novels,  and  that, 
presumably,  it  was  not  the  kind  of  thing  Monsieur 
Leblanc  expected  from  me !  I  added,  however, 
that  I  would  write  to  him  to  ascertain  what  he 
required ! " 

Madame  du  Maine  sent  her  an  imperative 
command  to  write  all  she  knew  of  the  affair. 
"  And  so  I  wrote,"  she  says,  "  but  without  priding 
myself  on  being  sincere,  and  I  wrote  only  what 
I  knew  they  least  cared  to  read." 


CHAPTER  XVI 

EVENTFUL  YEARS,   1720-1730 

WHILE  Madame  du  Maine  was  disdainfully 
drawing  round  her  again  the  magic  circle  which 
separated  her  from  the  rest  of  a  negligeable 
world,  France  had  gone  through  an  incredible 
series  of  dramatic  events;  the  apotheosis  of 
Dubois,  created  Cardinal,  a  gorgeous  and 
scandalous  ceremony  at  which  the  whole  Court 
had  been  present,  with  the  exception  of  Saint- 
Simon,  who  boasted  of  being  the  only  titled  man 
honoured  by  an  exclusion  —  the  death  of  the 
Cardinal  Minister  two  years  later,  amidst  general 
abhorrence.  "  J'espere  que  ce  temps-ci  fera  partir 
mon  drole,"  the  Regent  had  said  on  the  morning 
of  the  very  hot  day  on  which  he  died.  Other 
events  had  roused  to  the  utmost  the  emotions 
of  France;  the  total  collapse  of  Law's  system 
and  Law's  bank  in  the  Rue  Quincampoix,  and 
the  ruin  of  thousands  of  people.  Law  himself, 
who  had  become  a  Catholic  and  a  Frenchman, 
whose  sons  had  danced  the  Royal  Minuet  with 
the  boy  princes  of  the  blood,  had  reaped  the  fruits 

197  N  2 


198  EVENTFUL   YEARS 

of  his  labours  at  last.  He  had  been  attacked  by 
an  infuriated  mob,  had  seen  his  carriage  wrecked 
and  shattered,  and  had  barely  escaped  with  his 
life.  "  What !  has  Law  himself  not  been  torn  to 
pieces?"  was  the  cold-blooded  comment  of  a 
magistrate,  when  the  news  of  the  outrage  had 
been  announced  in  Parliament. 

The  young  King  had  been  at  death's  door, 
had  been  saved  against  all  expectations,  and  had 
been  betrothed  against  his  will  to  the  Infanta 
of  Spain,  a  baby  girl  of  three.  The  dignity  of 
the  eleven  -  year  -  old  boy  had  no  doubt  been 
vaguely  offended  by  the  choice  of  so  very  juvenile 
a  bride ;  at  any  rate  the  tears  had  welled  up  in 
his  eyes  when  the  proposal  had  been  made  to 
him,  and  he  had  given  his  formal  consent  before 
the  Privy  Council  in  a  very  low  and  constrained 
voice.  The  little  Infanta  had  arrived  and  been 
received  with  great  pomp.  She  was  fast  forgetting 
Spain  and  the  memories  of  her  babyhood.  Madame 
de  Ventadour,  the  young  King's  former  governess, 
had  been  assigned  to  her  as  chief  lady-in-waiting, 
and  on  her  lap  the  little  Princess  could  be  seen 
following  the  hunt  with  all  the  gravity  of  a  serious 
Spanish  baby.  The  young  King  had  been  crowned 
and  anointed  at  Rheims,  and  at  the  end  of  the 
same  year  1723,  the  Regent  had  died  quite 
suddenly  of  apoplexy.  Though  the  Regency 
proper  had  ceased  at  the  coming  of  age  of  the 


VERSAILLES  AND  SCEAUX  199 

King,  a  few  months  before,  he  had  still  nominally 
ruled  France  as  its  Prime  Minister.  To  whom 
should  the  direction  of  affairs  be  given  henceforth  ? 
The  natural  successor  was  the  Regent's  son,  but 
he  was  barely  twenty,  and  totally  unversed  in 
public  affairs.  The  choice  of  the  Council  fell 
therefore  on  the  next  in  dignity  —  Monsieur  le 
Due,  head  of  the  house  of  Conde. 

The  fact  that  Madame  du  Maine's  nephew  had 
been  appointed  Prime  Minister  did  not  establish 
any  closer  link  between  Versailles  and  Sceaux. 
For  years  Monsieur  le  Due  had  been  on  the  side 
of  the  enemy  in  the  great  litigation  between  the 
legitimate  and  the  legitimised  princes;  he  had 
been  the  Duchesse's  "  gaoler,"  or  so  she  had  con- 
sidered him  during  her  imprisonment  at  Pignerol, 
and  she  detested  him  cordially.  It  was  nothing 
to  her  that  he  had  redeemed  the  fortunes  of  the 
Condes,  beautified  Chantilly  beyond  measure,  paid 
off  those  creditors  who  in  her  childhood  days  had 
so  crowded  the  passages  of  the  castle  that  at 
times  circulation  had  been  difficult ;  nor  was  it 
of  any  account  to  her  that  all  this  had  been 
done,  thanks  to  the  gigantic  fortune  which  the 
Due  had  made  in  the  infamous  Rue  Quincampoix. 

If  Sceaux  ignored  Versailles,  Versailles  on  the 
other  hand  found  no  interest  in  Sceaux.  There 
was  nothing  there  which  could  have  attracted 
the  young  King;  he  neither  appreciated  its  com- 


200  EVENTFUL  YEARS 

merce  de  beaux-esprits,  nor  its  luxuriant  gardens, 
its  arbours  of  Persian  lilac  and  Bengal  roses,  its 
exotic  hot-house  flowers,  which  Madame  du  Maine 
loved  with  an  hereditary  love.  He  was  only 
happy  at  Rambouillet,  the  residence  of  the  Comte 
de  Toulouse,  and  the  best  hunting  ground  in  the 
kingdom. 

The  queen  of  Sceaux  might  have  been  jealous 
of  this  renewed  preference  shown  to  her  brother- 
in-law,  the  same  who  had  basked  in  the  sun  of 
the  Regent's  favours  whilst  the  house  of  Maine 
was  plunged  into  utter  abasement ;  she  had,  how- 
ever, in  theory  at  least,  abjured  all  rivalry.  It 
is  true  her  many  legal  researches  had  not  had  the 
results  she  had  hoped  for,  but  they  had  brought 
her  knowledge  of  a  very  pleasant  nature  —  the 
inferiority  to  herself  of  most  of  those  dukes  and 
peers  who  had  tried  to  trample  under  their  feet 
the  dignity  of  the  house  of  Maine.  She  had 
discovered,  and  had  taken  care  to  make  known 
to  the  world,  that  the  proud  De  Luynes  were 
descended  from  an  insignificant  little  lawyer,  the 
Richelieus  from  a  lute-player,  the  De  la  Roche- 
foucaulds  from  a  butcher,  the  De  Noailles  from 
a  servant  of  the  Comte  de  Beaufort.  She 
loved  to  dwell  on  these  discoveries  in  moments 
of  dejection,  and  they  were  a  balm  to  many 
small  wounds. 

One  of  these  was,  perhaps,  the  growing  popularity 


CARDINAL  DE  FLEURY  201 

of  the  Princesse  de  Conti.  The  Contis  were  a 
younger  branch  of  the  Cond£  family,  their  beautiful 
seat  at  lisle  d'Adam  was  famous  for  the  Venetian 
fetes  given  on  its  illuminated  canals  on  which 
flower  -  bedecked  boats  glided  to  the  strains  of 
Lulli  and  Rameau.  Madame  du  Maine  could 
easily  have  borne  a  rivalry  in  outward  display,  but 
the  point  which  rankled  in  her  heart  was  that 
the  Princesse  de  Conti's  salon  counted  more 
and  more  as  one  of  the  centres  of  intellectual  life. 
It  was  the  most  advanced  in  court  circles,  and  in 
its  spirit  a  precursor  of  those  salons  in  which  later 
on  the  Encyclopaedists  were  to  attack  and  to  deny 
with  ruthless  independence  of  mind.  Its  precincts 
— and  that  was  perhaps  a  slight  consolation  to 
Madame  du  Maine — were  generally  shunned  by 
the  young  King;  they  were  practically  forbidden 
ground  to  him,  for  Cardinal  de  Fleury  looked 
upon  1'Isle  d'Adam  as  a  hotbed  of  impiety,  and 
Louis  XV.  was  still  entirely  under  the  influence 
of  his  old  tutor. 

Cardinal  de  Fleury's  ascendency  in  political 
matters  was  daily  gaining  in  strength,  and 
Monsieur  le  Due  was  to  be  deprived  of  his 
office  before  long.  His  chief  aim  had  been  to 
raise  the  financial  status  of  France  at  all  costs, 
and  his  political  enemies  had  prompted  the  young 
King  with  the  declaration  that  he  was  weary 
of  the  tyranny  of  financiers  and  had  decided 


202  EVENTFUL  YEARS 

to  govern  for  himself.  The  last  important 
measure  taken  by  Monsieur  le  Due  was  to  be 
a  very  decisive  one,  however — the  annulling  of 
Louis  XV. 's  betrothal  to  the  Infanta  of  Spain. 
It  was  imperative  that  the  King  should  marry 
immediately  and  have  issue,  so  that  the  question 
of  the  succession  should  be  definitely  assured ;  for 
intrigues  were  still  rife,  and  France  had  proofs  of 
the  fact  that  Philip  V.  still  watched  with  feverish 
interest  every  fluctuation  in  the  King's  health. 

And  so,  one  day,  in  the  year  1725,  Marie 
Leczinska,  living  her  simple  unambitious  life  in 
Lorraine,  heard  the  wonderful  news  that  she 
was  chosen  to  be  Queen  of  France,  and  on  another 
day,  not  very  long  after,  the  little  seven-year- 
old  Infanta  stood  in  the  private  apartments  at 
Versailles,  surrounded  by  those  who  had  been 
attached  to  her  small  person,  and  in  the  dignified 
manner  which  was  hers  by  inheritance,  she  thanked 
them  gravely  for  their  care  and  for  the  interest 
they  had  taken  in  her  education.  Then,  in  her 
heavy  coach  drawn  by  six  mules,  she  set  out  on 
her  way  to  Spain,  escorted  by  her  Cameriera  and 
by  the  Spanish  ambassador. 

This  event  gravely  compromised  the  relations 
between  France  and  Spain,  and  although  the 
urgency  of  the  measure  had  been  fully  represented 
to  the  Spanish  Court,  the  two  countries,  which 
were  so  closely  allied,  stood  on  the  very  brink 


THE   HOUR  AND  THE   MAN  203 

of  a  war.  To  weather  the  threatening  storm, 
there  was  need  of  all  Cardinal  de  Fleury's  genius 
as  a  peace-maker,  and  his  successful  averting  of 
complications  did  a  great  deal  towards  strengthen- 
ing the  position  which  he  was  to  hold  for  so 
long.  For  years  he  was  to  be  chief  ruler  of 
France,  although  the  power  had  been  nominally 
transferred  to  the  hands  of  the  young  King,  who 
had  come  of  age  three  years  before  his  marriage. 


CHAPTER  XVII 

V ANITAS,    VANITATUM 

IT  had  been  the  prudent  wish  of  Madame  la 
Princesse  that  Mademoiselle  Delaunay  should  not 
re-enter  her  daughter's  service,  but  Madame  du 
Maine  waved  aside  the  suggestion ;  there  was 
still  a  great  scarcity  of  intelligent  listeners  at 
Sceaux,  and  Mademoiselle  Delaunay  had  decidedly 
proved  her  value,  she  was  not  a  person  to  be 
given  up.  For  the  first  time  the  Duchesse  deigned 
now  to  express  to  her  waiting- woman  a  gratitude 
which  had  been  well  earned.  An  appreciative 
letter  reached  Mademoiselle  Delaunay  by  secret 
ways,  and  was  read  by  her  with  great  emotion. 

"I  feel  more  affection  and  esteem  for  you  than 
ever,"  said  the  last  lines,  "  and  all  you  have  done 
has  not  surprised  me ;  I  trusted  your  intelligence 
and  your  fidelity.  As  soon  as  I  have  the  pleasure 
of  seeing  you,  you  will  receive  proofs  of  my 
friendship,  which  you  deserve.  Good-bye,  my 
dear  Delaunay." 

In  June  1720  the  last  and  the  most  obdurate 

of  the  Sceaux  conspirators  left  the  Bastille;  but 

204 


DISILLUSIONMENT  205 

to  her  liberty,  so  long  delayed,  had  no  enchant- 
ments ;  her  feelings  were  as  contradictory  as  those 
of  the  unselfish  and  devoted  Maisonrouge,  who 
did  not  know  whether  to  grieve  or  to  rejoice.  The 
love  of  the  Chevalier  du  Menil  had  not  stood 
the  test  of  the  "open  air"  as  she  said  herself— 
he  had  left  the  Bastille  some  time  before  her, 
and  the  last  few  months  had  done  much  towards 
proving  his  faithlessness.  The  world  seemed 
grey  and  empty  to  the  woman  who  felt  that 
even  her  self-respect  had  been  wrecked  in  this 
last  lamentable  love  affair.  All  through  her 
description  of  her  return  to  Sceaux  there  runs 
a  note  of  weary  disillusionment. 

"I  received  with  my  liberty,"  she  says,  "the 
order  to  start  at  once  for  Sceaux,  where  Madame  la 
Duchesse  du  Maine  was  staying.  I  sent  to  the 
Temple  to  ask  the  Abbe  de  Chaulieu  for  his 
carriage  to  take  me  to  his  house  and  then  to 
Sceaux.  He  was  already  very  ill,  and  his  illness 
was  to  end  fatally  three  weeks  later.  I  saw  him 
and  realised  how  indifferent  one  is  to  everything 
when  one  reaches  that  extremity.  He  had  been 
deeply  concerned  by  my  captivity,  and  now  he  did 
not  seem  to  be  even  touched  by  my  release.  I  felt 
keenly  the  impending  loss  of  a  friend  who  had  ever 
made  it  his  task  to  put  joy  into  my  life,  at  least  as 
much  joy  as  was  compatible  with  my  mode  of 
living ;  but  I  was  not  able  to  stay  with  the  Abbe 
as  long  as  I  should  have  liked;  I  had  to  start 
on  my  journey  without  tarrying. 

"  I  arrived  at  Sceaux  towards  evening,  Madame 


206  V ANITAS,    VANITATUM 

la  Duchesse  du  Maine  was  out  driving,  and  I 
went  down  through  the  gardens  to  meet  her. 
She  saw  me,  ordered  her  coachman  to  stop,  and 
said :  6  Ah !  here  is  Mademoiselle  Delaunay.  I 
am  very  glad  to  see  you  again.'  I  went  up  to 
her,  she  kissed  me,  and  drove  on.  I  went  back  to 
the  house  and  was  taken  to  the  room  which  she 
had  chosen  for  me.  I  was  delighted  to  find  that 
it  had  a  window  and  a  fire-place — and  to  hear 
that  there  were  two  new  waiting- women,  one  to 
replace  the  head  one  who  had  died,  and  the  other 
to  occupy  the  place  which  had  been  mine.  .  .  . 
There  was  hardly  any  one  at  Sceaux  when  I 
went  back.  The  Duchesse  d'Estrees  only  had 
come  as  soon  as  she  had  obtained  permission. 

"  Madame  la  Duchesse  du  Maine  was  not 
yet  allowed  to  see  many  people.  She  used  to 
play  *  biribi '  nearly  all  night  and  to  sleep  during 
the  greater  part  of  the  day.  I  was  asked  to  sit 
up  and  read  aloud,  just  as  I  had  done  before.  I 
was  very  much  out  of  practice,  and  this  tedious 
occupation  soon  made  me  regret  the  peace  of 
my  prison  days.  Madame  la  Duchesse  talked 
to  me  about  her  captivity,  and  told  me  all  that 
had  happened.  She  talked  a  great  deal,  and 
asked  very  few  questions.  ..." 

Vanitas,  vanitatum  !  alas  for  the  glamour  which 
once  lent  enchantment  to  a  princess's  protesta- 
tions of  attachment,  to  her  wearying  confidences 
during  the  long  wakeful  hours  of  the  night !  "  She 
kissed  me  and  drove  on  ...  she  talked  a  great 


LIFE   AT  SCEAUX  207 

deal  and  asked  very  few  questions !  .  .  . "  With 
what  uncompromising  sharpness  these  few  ^clear- 
cut  lines,  shorn  of  flourishes  of  fancy,  draw  the 
silhouette  of  irresponsible  selfishness. 

By  degrees  life  at  Sceaux  regained  its 
equilibrium ;  Monsieur  de  Malezieu  came  back 
from  Chatenay,  Mademoiselle  du  Maine  came 
back  from  her  convent  at  Chaillot — friends  returned, 
old  and  new.  There  were  some  defections :  the 
Cardinal  de  Polignac  would  never  again  explain 
his  Anti  -  Lucrece  to  a  fluttering  audience  of 
admiring  women ;  De  Laval  and  De  Pompadour, 
touched  to  the  quick  by  the  contempt  for  their 
literary  gifts,  expressed  in  Madame  du  Maine's 
"  Declaration,"  turned  their  backs  upon  Sceaux 
and  preserved  a  haughty  silence.  But  for  these 
social  losses  there  were  some  compensations. 
Sceaux  had  made  obeisance  to  Versailles,  the 
candour  of  its  Virgilian  atmosphere  was  not 
marred  by  the  faintest  breath  of  politics ;  the 
Regent  and  even  the  most  cautious  of  Versailles' 
courtiers  confirmed  that  by  their  frequent  presence. 

The  echoes  of  the  peaceful  valley  of  the  Bievre 
again  resounded  with  odes  and  eglogues  in  praise 
of  its  familiar  genii,  and  Madame  du  Maine 
trod  its  soft  lawns  and  winding  paths  as  Venus, 
Hebe,  or  Astarte,  just  as  circumstances  required. 
Monsieur  du  Maine,  restored  to  his  charges  and 
with  the  hope  of  being  some  day  restored  to  his 


208  VANITAS,    VANITATUM 

dignities,  enjoyed  with  serenity  the  new  shadow 
of  authority  which  had  come  to  him  under  the 
new  regime. 

No  shadow  seemed  to  darken  this  bright  scene, 
except  that  thrown  by  a  figure  which  stood  neither 
outside  nor  inside  the  enchanted  circle,  but 
hovered  ever  between  the  two  in  all  the  discomfort 
of  a  false  position.  "  The  distinctions  which  had 
been  granted  to  me,  since  I  had  given  up  the 
functions  and  the  title  of  a  waiting-woman,  had 
no  defined  limits,"  complains  this  victim,  "  and  I 
did  not  know  whether  I  was  inside  or  outside. 
Whenever  I  crossed  the  boundary,  either  uncon- 
sciously or  by  order  of  Madame  la  Duchesse 
du  Maine,  the  expressions  and  the  murmurs  of 
her  ladies-in-waiting,  careful  of  the  distance  which 
should  be  observed  between  us,  made  me  realise 
it  most  unpleasantly." 

Mademoiselle  Delaunay's  scepticism  increased 
perceptibly  at  that  time,  and  it  is  not  to  be 
wondered  at.  Du  M£nil  has  shamefully  con- 
fessed his  indifference  and  has  married  a  cousin 
heavily  endowed  with  flesh  and  with  money,  but 
very  sparsely  provided  with  intelligence.  The  two 
lovers  had  been  wont  to  laugh  over  her  letters 
together  in  the  old  days  of  the  Bastille.  The 
deserted  woman  has  wept  her  last  tears  of 
disappointed  love,  bitter  and  strenuous  tears,  of 
which  she  is  ashamed,  and  which  have  made  her 


MADAME    DU    C  HATE  LET. 


To  face  p.  208. 


MARQUISE   DU  DEFFAND  209 

realise  all  of  a  sudden  that  she  is  old,  and  that 
to  her  the  world  is  old  and  colourless.  The 
famous  Marquise  du  Deffand,  the  sceptic  par 
excellence  at  least  in  manner  and  in  principle, 
wins  her  admiring  sympathy  at  the  very  first 
visit  she  pays  to  Sceaux. 

"  No  one  possesses  more  wit,"  Mademoiselle 
Delaunay  exclaims,  "  and  of  so  natural  a  kind ; 
this  sparkling  fire  which  fills  her  puts  life  into 
everything  and  penetrates  it  down  to  its  inner- 
most recesses ;  it  gives  relief  to  the  faintest  lines. 
She  possesses  in  a  supreme  degree  the  talent  of 
depicting  a  character,  and  her  portraits,  which 
are  more  living  than  their  originals,  give  a  better 
knowledge  than  one  could  gain  from  the  closest 
relations  with  the  originals." 

It  was  under  the  influence  of  Madame  du 
Deffand  that  Mademoiselle  Delaunay  made  that 
inventory  of  her  qualities  and  features  which 
resulted  in  the  uncomplimentary  portrait  of  herself 
already  quoted.  It  is  a  pessimistic  production 
from  beginning  to  end ;  having  shown  little 
leniency  towards  herself,  she  feels  authorised  to 
show  none  at  all  to  others,  she  declares  deliber- 
ately; and  disillusionment  rings  all  through  the 
last  lines  of  her  portrait : 

"  She  has  always  been  sensitive  to  friendship, 
but  has  set  more  store  by  the  merit  and  the 
virtue  of  her  friends  than  by  their  feeling  for  her ; 

o 


210  VANITAS,    VANITATUM 

she  has  been  indulgent  to  them,  if  they  have 
only  failed  her,  provided  they  did  not  fall  short 
of  what  they  owed  to  themselves.  .  .  .  ' 

The  chapter  of  sentiment  and  romance  is 
closed  for  Mademoiselle  Delaunay  and  another 
has  opened :  that  of  sober  considerations. 

As  the  adaptability  of  her  temperament 
decreased  the  complications  of  her  position 
increased,  and  led  her  to  a  serious  consideration 
of  possible  means  of  escape ;  two  refuges  seemed 
within  reach  —  a  convent  or  a  mariage  de 
convenance.  A  few  legacies  from  old  friends 
made  her  an  eligible  candidate  for  either  status, 
and  it  might  have  been  comparatively  easy  to 
find  an  honest  commoner,  willing  to  share  with 
her  his  name  and  the  solidity  of  his  bourgeois 
home,  in  exchange  for  promotion  or  the  credit 
which  might  accrue  to  him  from  the  protection 
of  the  court  of  Sceaux.  The  wife's  share  in  this 
transaction  was,  so  far,  slightly  problematic,  as 
it  depended  on  the  good-will  of  her  patrons,  and 
Madame  du  Maine  saw  treachery  in  any  plan 
which  would  partly  deprive  her  of  very  valuable 
services.  As  to  Monsieur  du  Maine,  in  all  matters 
not  political,  he  had  not  shaken  off  his  chains 
and  could  not  be  relied  upon  to  act  independently. 
Mademoiselle  Delaunay  felt  after  due  consideration, 
that  under  the  circumstances  it  would  be  easier 
to  enter  a  convent  than  to  steer  safely  into  the 


THE   FAITHFUL  LOVER  211 

harbour  of  matrimony,  and,  foreseeing  Madame 
du  Maine's  opposition,  she  decided  not  to  consult 
her.  She  went  secretly  to  a  Carmelite  convent 
and  asked  to  be  admitted  as  a  novice.  The 
nuns  did  not  receive  her  with  that  ardour  for 
proselytism  which  is  commonly  attributed  to 
them;  they  enquired  into  the  sincerity  of  this 
sudden  vocation,  and  when  the  postulant  retorted 
by  begging  them  to  take  her  in  at  once,  lest 
her  fervour  should  suddenly  evaporate,  the  Mother 
Superior  pushed  her  back  gently  into  the  carriage 
which  had  brought  her.  Thus  ended  Mademoiselle 
Delaunay's  only  attempt  at  conventual  life. 

The  other  harbour  still  remained  open,  and  in 
spite  of  sober  reason  and  sobering  experiences, 
she  still  had  a  lurking  hope  that  her  heart  might 
have  some  share  in  the  satisfaction  with  which 
she  would  glide  into  its  shallow  waters.  The 
absolute  devotion  of  the  ex-cavalry  captain, 
Monsieur  de  Maisonrouge,  was  strong  enough  to 
throw,  even  now,  some  glamour  of  sentiment  over 
a  union  which  was  still  his  one  aim ;  but  now, 
as  before,  the  Chevalier  du  Menil  stood  between 
him  and  Mademoiselle  Delaunay,  and  ere  the 
latter  had  succeeded  in  shaking  herself  free  of  her 
folly,  death  intervened,  and  poor  faithful  De 
Maisonrouge  had  to  go  where  human  desires  are 
unfulfilled. 

Once  again,  later  on,  sentiment  softened  with 


212  VANITAS,    VANITATUM 

its  glow  the  harsh  outlines  of  a  prospective 
business  arrangement,  and  this  was  the  result  of 
Madame  de  la  Ferte's  efforts.  The  Duchesse, 
reconciled  to  her  protegee  since  the  latter  had 
justified  her  prognostications,  was  convinced  that 
she  could  be  as  successful  with  Mademoiselle 
Delaunay's  second  "establishment"  as  she  had 
been  with  the  first !  Her  choice  fell  on  a  dis- 
consolate widower,  whose  wife  had  been  a  very 
intellectual  woman.  The  description  of  her 
"  strategy,"  as  given  to  her  matrimonial  candidate, 
shows  her  as  breezy  and  self-confident  as  ever: 

"  I  found  at  the  Marechal  de  Villeroi's  that  poor 
Dacier,"  she  writes.  "  It  is  pitiful  to  see  him. 
He  told  us  that  he  was  as  full  of  grief  as  on 
the  first  day,  and  ready  to  die  of  despair.  'Eh 
bien,'  I  said  to  him,  'there  is  only  one  way  of 
finding  comfort,  you  must  marry  again.'  '  Great 
God  ! '  he  exclaimed,  '  what  woman  could  replace 
the  one  I  have  lost  ?  .  .  .  '  '  Mademoiselle 
Delaunay,'  I  answered.  For  a  few  minutes  he 
remained  silent  with  astonishment,  and  after  some 
reflexion  he  said :  '  She  is  the  only  woman  in 
the  world  with  whom  I  could  live,  and  who 
would  not  be  an  offence  to  the  memory  of 
Madame  Dacier.' 

"  The  Marechal  and  I,  seeing  that  he  was 
affected,  enlarged  upon  the  theme,  and  we  left  him 
quite  inclined  to  consider  the  question.  I  want 
him  to  marry  you ;  he  enjoys  some  celebrity  and 
sufficient  means.  The  place  you  will  fill  is  that 


DACIER  213 

of  an  illustrious  woman ;  this  marriage  will  be  as 
honourable  as  it  will  be  useful." 

Having  sown  her  seed  in  two  directions, 
Madame  de  la  Ferte  left  the  rest  in  the  hands  of 
Providence,  according  to  her  custom.  She  swore 
that  she  would  bring  this  matter  to  a  successful 
issue,  but  she  went  on  a  journey  and  forgot  her 
scheme.  Meanwhile  the  seeds  were  undergoing 
their  natural  process  of  germination.  Monsieur 
Dacier's  recovery  was  decidedly  progressing;  the 
comfort  held  out  to  him  as  a  possibility  had  come 
to  appear  to  him  a  necessity,  and  he  was  rumin- 
ating over  means  to  his  end,  when  a  move  from 
the  other  side  came  to  his  help.  Mademoiselle 
Delaunay,  anxious  to  ascertain  whether  Madame 
de  la  Ferte's  visions  could  be  materialised,  sent  her 
old  friend,  Monsieur  de  Valincourt,  as  a  skilful 
ambassador  who  could  obtain  a  knowledge  of  the 
situation  without  showing  too  much  of  his 
credentials.  The  interview  between  him  and 
Monsieur  Dacier  was  most  satisfactory,  and  media- 
tion soon  became  quite  unnecessary.  Through 
some  deplorable  fatality,  however,  the  more  cordial 
Monsieur  Dacier's  advances  became,  the  more 
determined  grew  Mademoiselle  Delaunay 's  reserva- 
tions, and  it  was  only  when  the  finality  of  death 
broke  up  the  position  that  she  "  felt  the  irreparable 
error  which  she  had  committed  in  missing  such  a 

splendid  opportunity  to  gain  leisure  and  liberty." 

o  2 


214  VANITAS,    VANITATUM 

As  an  epitaph  on  a  last  hope  these  words 
certainly  lack  sentiment,  and  her  report  on  subse- 
quent disappointments  strike  a  still  more  practical 
business  note.  These  passages  of  an  eighteenth- 
century  diary  savour  strangely  of  the  style  to 
be  found  in  the  advertisements  of  a  modern 
matrimonial  agency.  "A  man  moderately  rich, 
in  a  fairly  good  position,  living  a  somewhat  retired 
life  in  Paris,  required  a  sensible  wife  to  keep 
him  company.  As  I  did  not  know  him,"  says 
Mademoiselle  Delaunay,  "  I  doubted  whether  I 
could  put  up  with  his  society.  The  affair  having 
to  be  concluded  with  preliminary  examination,  I 
refused." 

Another  affair  was  not  despatched  with  quite 
so  much  celerity ;  a  trusted  friend  had  proposed 
it.  This  time  the  candidate  was  "  a  member  of  the 
landed  gentry,  about  fifty  years  of  age,  recently 
retired  from  active  service  and  living  on  a  hand- 
some income  in  the  provinces,  in  a  well-built  and 
comfortably-furnished  house."  It  seems  that  a 
"preliminary  examination"  was  allowed  in  this 
case,  for  Mademoiselle  Delaunay  went  to  see  the 
prospective  suitor  at  the  house  of  the  friend  who 
was  seeking  to  bring  about  the  marriage.  He 
was,  we  hear,  moderatedly  handsome  and  of 
stately  presence — the  impression  made  on  him  by 
Mademoiselle  Delaunay  was  not  unfavourable. 
"He  did  not  find  me  as  decrepit  as  he  had 


LOVE   AND  THE   WINDOW  215 

expected,"  she  says, "  and,  moreover,  he  was  satisfied 
with  the  small  property  1  possessed.  .  .  .  He  said 
to  his  friend  that  he  was  prepared  to  conclude  the 
business,  provided  I  felt  no  repugnance  for  a  life 
spent  in  a  country  home." 

The  prospective  bride  had,  unluckily,  a  very 
great  distaste  for  seclusion,  and  it  was  truly  to  be 
deplored  that  most  of  her  suitors  had  chosen  to 
live  a  retired  life.  She  consulted  with  one  of  her 
friends,  described  the  situation,  and  added  the 
cheerful  comment  that  this  marriage  seemed  to 
her  like  "throwing  herself  from  a  window,"  but 
that,  to  tell  the  truth,  she  had  been  aiming  at  that 
for  some  time  past.  Only  one  answer  was  possible 
to  this — the  friend  wrote  that  the  "window"  in 
question  was  at  least  a  "  tenth  floor  window,"  that 
it  would  be  wiser  not  to  select  it  quite  so  high 
up,  and  that  to  live  shut  in  between  four  walls, 
with  some  one  who  would  perhaps  be  incapable  of 
pleasing,  would  be  the  surest  way  to  turn  into  a 
reality  what  so  far  had  only  been  a  figure  of  speech. 


CHAPTER  XVIII 

MADAME    DU   MAINE   AS    A   MATRIMONIAL   AGENT 

MADAME  DU  MAINE  was  meanwhile  also  engaged 
in  a  matrimonial  quest ;  she  realised  that  the  only 
way  to  retain  Mademoiselle  Delaunay's  services, 
and  to  keep  her  tolerably  happy,  was  to  marry  her 
to  some  gentleman  of  the  Ducal  household,  whose 
charge  should  entail  residence  at  Sceaux,  and  whose 
position  should  give  his  wife  the  right  to  figure 
lawfully  among  the  ladies-in-waiting  at  the  Court. 
The  Duchesse's  statements  were  more  concerned 
with  the  description  of  the  "wife  offered,"  and 
Mademoiselle  Delaunay  repeats  with  an  enviable 
sense  of  humour  what  she  has  heard  about  it. 

"  Madame  la  Duchesse  du  Maine,"  she  says, "  has 
commissioned  Madame  de  Sully,  wife  of  a  Swiss 
officer,  to  find  in  the  Helvetian  corps  commanded 
by  Monsieur  le  Due  du  Maine,  a  man  willing  to 
accept  a  wife  who  has  neither  beauty  nor  youth, 
neither  fortune  nor  family.  The  whole  of  the 
thirteen  Swiss  Cantons  would  hardly  suffice  for 
such  a  discovery !  Naturally  the  lady  took  a  long 
time  about  it,  and  I  had  quite  forgotten  her 
commission  when,  having  come  to  Sceaux  one  day 

216 


A   RETIRED  LIFE  217 

she  said  to  me  :  'I  think  that  I  have  found  the  man 
for  whom  we  are  looking. '  She  had  accompanied  her 
husband  on  a  visit  to  one  of  his  compatriots,  and 
had  come  upon  a  veritable  little  idyll." 

A  retired  life  once  more !  but  the  clever  mediator 
described  it  with  convincing  appreciation. 

"  I  found  a  little  house  very  clean  and  quite  new, 
surrounded  by  pastures  with  flocks  of  cows  and  sheep. 
The  master  of  the  house,  who-  is  not  a  young  man, 
won  my  sympathy  by  his  prepossessing  appearance. 
He  is  of  gentle  birth,  a  widower,  and  lives  in  this 
retreat  with  two  daughters.  They  seem  to  be  sweet 
and  sensible  and  entirely  occupied  with  the  duties 
of  housekeeping.  He  has  had  very  slow  promotion, 
although  he  has  been  in  the  army  for  some  time, 
and  has  always  done  his  duty;  but  he  has  kept 
himself  in  the  background,  and  merit  which  does 
not  brag  of  itself  is  rarely  discovered.  I  think, 
however,  that  a  protection  which  would  advance 
his  interests  without  demanding  too  many  efforts 
on  his  part,  would  be  very  agreeable  to  him,  and 
if  Madame  la  Duchesse  du  Maine  will  allow  me  to 
put  the  matter  before  him,  I  have  no  doubt,  from 
what  I  hear,  that  the  proposition  will  be  received 
favourably,  and  that  it  will  be  a  most  suitable 
establishment  for  you.  He  is  a  man  of  good 
family,  who  has  lived  very  little  in  society  and  has 
not  adopted  its  vices.  He  possesses,  two  miles 
out  of  Paris,  a  small  property  which  he  manages 
himself;  this,  added  to  what  the  protection  of 
Monsieur  le  Due  du  Maine  will  do  for  him,  will 
secure  ample  comfort  for  both  of  you." 


218  AS   A   MATRIMONIAL  AGENT 

This  well- modulated  speech,  gliding  so  pleasantly 
from  the  tones  of  wordliness  to  those  of  the  pipes 
of  Pan,  fired  Mademoiselle  Delaunay's  imagina- 
tion. It  suggested  to  her  the  picture  of  an  idyllic 
life,  in  which  each  feature  assumed  a  sweet  and 
naive  charm.  "  I  was  then  in  the  habit  of  taking 
milk,"  she  says,  "  and  for  the  time  being  nothing 
seemed  as  likely  to  afford  satisfaction  as  to  have 
cows  at  hand." 

Some  minor  points  had  to  be  settled  before 
the  chief  conditions  of  the  agreement  could  be 
considered.  The  excellent  daughters  had  to  be 
pacified  by  the  assurance  that  their  prospective 
stepmother  was  not  plotting  to  wrest  from 
their  hands  the  sceptre  of  housekeeping  or  the 
authority  in  the  poultry-yard.  Once  this  was 
safely  accomplished,  it  was  possible  to  pass  on 
to  more  important  things.  Monsieur  de  Staal,  the 
Swiss  lieutenant  in  question,  stated  as  his  chief 
condition  that  he  should  be  made  captain  of  his 
regiment  after  the  death  of  the  present  occupant 
of  that  post,  who  was  in  a  very  precarious  state 
of  health.  He  proposed  that  the  marriage  should 
be  concluded  as  soon  as  he  should  have  been  given 
some  security  that  this  request  would  be  granted. 
A  demand  so  reasonable  met  with  more  opposition 
than  might  have  been  expected,  and  Madame  du 
Maine's  difficulties  on  this  occasion  cannot  fail  to 
enlist  our  sympathies  for  her  impatience  at  her 


AS  A   MATRIMONIAL  AGENT  219 

husband's  dilatory  methods.  Manoeuvres  and 
counter-manoeuvres  occupied  a  considerable  time, 
and  the  two  candidates  had  not  met  yet!  But 
the  Due  du  Maine,  being  at  last  satisfactorily  tied 
down  to  his  promise,  a  meeting  was  arranged  at 
Madame  de  Sully's  house,  followed  soon  after  by 
a  dinner  at  Monsieur  de  StaaFs  country  place. 

' 'The  house,  the  repast,  the  company,  every- 
thing suggested  the  simplicity  of  the  golden  age," 
exclaims  Mademoiselle  Delaunay.  "  I  found  a 
small  house,  bright  and  clean,  with  white-washed 
walls ;  the  absence  of  much  furniture  seemed 
rather  an  adornment,  although  later  on  I  did  not 
so  much  appreciate  that  style  of  house  decoration. 
Fowls  from  the  poultry-yard,  meat  from  the  flocks, 
and  fruit  from  the  orchard  covered  the  table,  as 
happened  in  the  time  when  Jupiter,  the  hospit- 
able, was  revered.  Our  young  hostesses  had  pre- 
pared most  of  the  dishes  themselves,  and  regaled 
us  with  cakes  and  cheese  made  and  served  by 
their  own  hands.  I  looked  on  with  pleasure  at 
this  way  of  living,  which  is  in  accordance  with 
Nature,  and  has  become  so  foreign  to  our  tastes, 
and  I  believed  that  it  would  suit  me.  I  felt 
well  satisfied  with  the  master  of  the  house,  with 
his  bearing,  and  a  certain  unstudied  courtesy  which 
comes  from  the  heart  and  denotes  a  kindly  and 
benevolent  nature.  ...  I  found,  in  fact,  that 
such  was  his  character.  .  .  .  We  had,  after  dinner 
a  conversation  in  which  we  discussed  the  affair  in 
question.  Monsieur  de  Staal  expressed  his  great 


220  AS   A    MATRIMONIAL  AGENT 

wish  to  see  it  concluded,  but  remained  firm  never- 
theless in  his  intention  not  to  come  to  a  final 
agreement  until  he  should  have  been  assured  of 
his  promotion.  I  approved  this  wise  precaution, 
and  we  separated  satisfied  with  one  another. 
When  I  had  got  into  my  carriage,  he  deposited 
at  my  feet  a  small  lamb,  the  fattest  of  the  flock, 
which  he  begged  me  to  accept.  This  pastoral 
gallantry  seemed  to  me  in  perfect  keeping  with 
all  the  rest." 

An  introduction  of  so  entirely  satisfactory  a 
character  ought  to  have  hastened  the  conclusion, 
but  Monsieur  du  Maine,  on  whom  it  depended, 
never  hurried.  Meanwhile  time  slipped,  the 
tender  colours  of  the  idyll  were  fading  one  by 
one  in  Mademoiselle  Delaunay's  memory,  and 
when  Madame  du  Maine  sent  for  her  unex- 
pectedly one  day  to  tell  her  that  Monsieur  de 
Staal  had  received  his  nomination,  and  that  all 
was  settled,  she  was  filled  with  dismay.  That 
which  had  seemed  pleasant  at  a  distance  changed 
its  aspect  as  it  drew  near.  "  I  was  astonished," 
she  says,  "  at  my  past  blindness,  and  yet  felt  the 
impossibility  of  drawing  back,  after  the  steps  which 
had  been  taken.  I  fell  into  a  kind  of  stupor."  A 
severe  illness  gave  her  for  a  time  some  hope  of 
escape,  but  she  was  restored  to  health  in  spite  of 
her  wishes,  and  in  vain  did  she  entreat  the 
Duchesse  to  intervene.  Madame  du  Maine  hardly 


MARRIED 

listened,  and  her  indignant  attitude  later  on  towards 
any  outside  claims  on  Mademoiselle  Delaunay's 
time  shows  that  she  never  deigned  to  remember 
"either  the  representations  made  to  her  or  the 
encouragement  she  had  then  given  to  the  pro- 
posed division  of  duties." 

The  marriage  contract  was  signed ;  the  Due 
du  Maine  granted  the  bride  a  pension  for  life; 
Madame  du  Maine  provided  a  trousseau. 

"The  victim,"  say  the  Memoirs,  "bound  and 
garlanded,  was  sadly  led  to  the  altar  by  Madame 
de  Chambonas,  lady-in-waiting  to  Madame  la 
Duchesse  du  Maine,  and  then  taken  back  to 
Her  Serene  Highness ;  she  received  and  embraced 
me  with  great  transports  of  joy.  I  then  went 
on  to  Monsieur  le  Due  du  Maine  to  whom  I 
quoted  the  words  of  the  psalm :  '  Suscitans  a 
terra  inopem,  etc.  .  .  .'  I  might  add  besides,  I 
said :  '  qui  habitare  facit  sterilem  in  domo.  ..." 

After  the  ceremony  was  over,  a  small  wedding 
party  got  into  a  coach  to  accompany  the  new 
bride  to  Gennevilliers,  her  husband's  country 
house.  Alas !  the  little  white  house  worthy  once 
of  the  inscription  "  Parva  domus,  magna  quies," 
and  which  before  had  been  wreathed  in  smiles, 
was  now  all  frowns. 

"My  step-daughters,"  says  the  bride,  "had 
apparently  flattered  themselves  that  the  affair  would 
not  be  concluded ;  they  were  angry  at  my  arrival  and 


AS   A   MATRIMONIAL  AGENT 

disappeared  instead  of  coming  to  meet  me.  They 
had  not  consented  to  be  present  at  the  ceremony,  a 
fact  which  had  already  made  me  understand  how 
ill-disposed  they  were  towards  me.  After  many 
exhortations  the  eldest  was  at  last  prevailed  upon 
to  show  herself;  she  came  with  a  rather  bad  grace, 
but  I  pretended  not  to  notice  this,  and  by  many 
advances  I  tried  to  overcome  her  temper  which 
mended  a  little  at  last.  The  youngest  daughter 
appeared  towards  the  end  of  the  dinner  with  a  few 
unconvincing  excuses  for  not  having  come  sooner, 
and  finally  everything  assumed  a  decent,  though  not 
very  enchanting,  appearance.  Monsieur  de  Staal  was 
grieved  at  this  disagreeable  reception.  I  could  feel 
nothing  but  surprise  at  being  married  at  all,  and 
there  was  in  the  air  a  feeling  of  discomfort  which 
by  degrees  invaded  the  whole  company." 

The  day  after  this  pleasant  initiation,  the  bride 
was  found  sobbing  in  her  room  by  the  very  friend 
who  had  brought  about  the  marriage,  and  after  the 
departure  of  her  guests  she  felt  utterly  forsaken 
and  a  stranger  in  a  house  which  she  should  have 
considered  her  own.  "Monsieur  de  Staal,"  she 
owns,  "did  all  he  could  to  make  me  happy,  but 
my  first  impression  could  not  easily  be  dispelled." 

Her  stay  at  Gennevilliers  was  necessarily  a 
short  one ;  after  a  few  days  she  and  her  husband 
returned  to  Sceaux  to  take  up  their  duties  there. 
Some  feeling  of  elation  might  have  been  expected 
from  Madame  de  Staal  on  entering  upon  equal 


THE  NEW   ESTATE  223 

terms  at  last  the  social  sphere  to  which  her 
education  and  her  tastes  entitled  her,  but  her 
new  advantages  are  by  no  means  painted  by  her 
in  glowing  colours. 

"  Madame  du  Maine  showed  much  pleasure  in 
meeting  me  again  under  my  new  garb ;  I  enjoyed 
forthwith  all  the  privileges  of  the  ladies  in  her  house- 
hold— admission  to  her  table,  to  her  carriage.  But 
I  noticed  on  future  occasions  the  repugnance  she 
felt  in  being  seen  with  me  in  the  broad  daylight  of 
publicity.  When  the  King  held  the  review  of  the 
Swiss  guards,  Monsieur  le  Due  du  Maine  told  her 
that  she  ought  certainly  to  go  to  it,  and  to  allow  me 
to  see  this  spectacle.  She  went  and  made  me  go 
with  Madame  de  Surl  ...  in  another  carriage  .  .  . 
not  in  hers,  in  which  she  took  Madame  de 
Bess  .  .  .  better  known  at  Court.  From  this  I 
concluded  that  the  sacrament  of  marriage  does 
not  wipe  out  les  taches  originelles  like  the 
sacrament  of  baptism." 

Other  discoveries  awaited  her:  Monsieur  de 
Staal  went  to  spend  Lent  at  his  country  house, 
and  sent  his  wife  word  that  he  was  to  start  on 
a  campaign  directly  after  Easter.  He  therefore 
begged  her  to  spend  the  Easter  week  with  him 
at  Gennevilliers. 

"  I  put  the  proposal  before  Madame  du  Maine," 
said  Madame  de  Staal ;  "  she  listened  to  it  with 
astonishment  and  indignation,  and  not  satisfied 
with  an  absolute  refusal  to  grant  my  wishes,  she 


224,  AS  A   MATRIMONIAL  AGENT 

bitterly  complained  of  my  request,  and  accused 
me  of  the  blackest  ingratitude  and  of  the  most 
iniquitous  procedures,  just  as  if  I  had  entirely 
failed  in  my  duty  to  her  in  wishing  to  show  some 
dutifulness  to  the  husband  whom  she  had  given 
me.  I  tried  in  vain  to  recall  to  her  the  previous 
discussions  which  I  had  had  with  her  on  that  very 
subject:  everything  had  been  forgotten  and  was 
flatly  denied  ;  I.  then  saw  that  I  had  only  fastened 
more  securely  the  chains  which  I  had  tried  to 
loosen." 


CHAPTER  XIX 

THE   LATER    COURT    OF    SCEAUX 

WITH  the  words  just  quoted  the  Memoirs  end ; 
of  the  twenty  years  and  more  which  were  still 
before  her,  Madame  de  Staal  Delaunay  has 
recorded  nothing,  and  there  could  be  no  stronger 
testimony  to  the  truth  of  the  feeling  she  expressed 
as  she  closed  her  diary  for  ever.  With  her  own 
hands  she  had  definitely  fastened  the  chains,  she 
had  closed  the  gates  which  lead  to  the  wide 
avenues  of  possibilities,  and  she  saw  before  her 
the  path  of  dead  certainty  marked  out  to  its 
hopeless  end.  Of  her  dispirited  walk  down  that 
dull  path,  what  should  she  record,  and  why 
reiterate  vain  regrets  ? 

And  so  silence  reigns  more  or  less  over  this 
last  part  of  her  life ;  of  her  correspondence  during 
these  years  very  little  remains.  The  two  men 
who  had  occupied  a  supreme  place  in  her 
thoughts  are  dead:  the  Marquis  de  Silly  will 
never  again  exact  in  his  lordly  fashion  those 
epistolary  communications  so  charming  that  they 

held  his  mind  in  bondage,  though  his  heart  was 

225  F 


226         THE  LATER  COURT  OF  SCEAUX 

unaffected ;  the  Chevalier  de  M£nil,  passing  from 
her  through  the  gates  of  treachery,  is  dead  to 
her.  The  Abbe  de  Chaulieu,  who  had  once 
counted  as  lost  a  day  in  which  he  had  not  found 
the  means  to  please  her,  had  at  last  reached 
the  very  limit  of  old  age  and  life  without  ever 
being  conscious  of  approaching  it.  No  one 
remained  who  mattered  vitally  to  Madame  de 
Staal,  except  the  confident e  and  kindred  spirit 
of  her  later  years — the  Marquise  du  Deffand. 
Here  and  there  only,  in  letters  written  to  her, 
she  throws  off  her  load  of  silence  and  allows 
herself  the  luxury  of  small  outbursts.  "  O  ma 
reine ! "  she  exclaims,  "  que  les  hommes  et  leurs 
femelles  sont  de  plaisants  animaux.  Je  ris  de 
leurs  manoeuvres  le  jour  que  j'ai  bien  dormi: 
quand  le  sommeil  me  manque,  je  suis  prete  a  les 
assommer,"  and  she  adds  philosophically,  "this 
shows  that  I  myself  have  not  strayed  very  far 
from  the  species." 

The  "species,"  she  understood  them  and 
judged  them  with  merciless  lucidity ;  a  most 
striking  example  of  it  is  the  portrait  of  Madame 
du  Maine  which  Madame  du  Deffand  once 
found  in  a  letter  addressed  to  her  by  Madame 
de  Staal  within  the  last  ten  years  of  their  corre- 
spondence. The  tone  of  detached  criticism,  of 
coldly  meted  out  justice,  which  runs  all  through 
the  description  of  a  woman  at  whose  hands  she 


STILL   A   CHILD  227 

had  suffered,  and  suffered  very  poignantly,  makes 
it  interesting  enough  to  be  quoted  in  full. 

"Madame  la  Duchesse  du  Maine  has  arrived 
at  the  age  of  sixty  without  having  been  taught 
anything  by  her  experiences ;  she  is  a  child 
possessed  of  much  wit,  she  has  the  unpleasing 
and  the  pleasing  qualities  of  a  child.  Being 
inquisitive  and  credulous,  she  has  wished  to  be 
acquainted  with  all  the  different  branches  of 
knowledge,  but  has  been  satisfied  with  super- 
ficialities. The  decisions  of  those  who  have 
brought  her  up  have  become  the  principles  and 
rules  of  her  life,  she  has  never  doubted  their 
excellence,  she  has  submitted  to  them  once  for 
all.  Her  provision  of  ideas  is  made ;  she  would 
reject  the  most  clearly  demonstrated  truths  and 
the  best  arguments,  if  they  went  against  the 
first  impressions  which  she  has  received.  To 
examine  into  anything  is  impossible  to  her  light- 
mindedness,  and  a  state  of  doubt  is  unbearable 
to  her  frailty.  Her  catechism  and  Descartes's 
philosophy  are  two  systems  in  which  she  has 
equal  faith. 

"  Her  opinion  of  herself,  however  excessive,  has 
only  gone  as  far  as  it  has  been  made  to  go.  The 
idea  she  has  of  her  value  is  a  prejudice  which 
has  been  given  to  her,  like  the  rest  of  her  opinions. 
She  believes  in  herself  as  she  believes  in  God 
and  in  Descartes,  without  examination,  without 
discussion.  Her  mirror  has  not  been  able  to 
cast  any  doubt  on  the  charms  of  her  physiognomy. 
The  testimony  of  her  eyes  is  more  suspicious  to 


228         THE  LATER  COURT  OF  SCEAUX 

her  than  the  judgment  of  those  who  have  decided 
that  she  is  both  beautiful  and  well-made.  Her 
vanity  is  of  a  singular  kind,  yet  it  seems  less 
shocking  because  it  is  not  reasoned  out,  although 
it  is  all  the  more  absurd  for  it. 

"  To  have  intercourse  with  her  is  slavery ; 
her  tyranny  is  quite  unconcealed ;  she  does  not 
deign  to  colour  it  with  the  semblance  of  friend- 
ship. She  says  ingenuously  that  she  is  unlucky 
enough  not  to  be  able  to  do  without  people  for 
whom  she  does  not  care  at  all :  and,  indeed,  she 
proves  it.  One  sees  her  hear  with  perfect 
indifference  the  death  of  those  who  made  her 
shed  tears  if  they  were  a  quarter  of  an  hour  late 
for  a  game  or  a  walk. 

"  One  cannot  have  any  illusions  about  her : 
her  frankness,  or,  to  put  it  more  accurately,  the 
little  consideration  she  has  for  anybody,  causes 
her  never  to  dissimulate  any  of  her  caprices. 
She  suggested  to  a  great  wit  of  her  times  the 
saying  that  'princes  are  in  a  moral  sphere  what 
monsters  are  in  physical  life ;  in  them  one  can 
perceive  with  perfect  clearness  most  of  those  vices 
which  are  imperceptible  in  other  men.' 

"  Her  temper  is  impetuous  and  uneven,  she 
passes  from  anger  to  despair,  to  indignation,  to 
serenity,  twenty  times  within  a  quarter  of  an 
hour.  She  often  rouses  herself  from  the  very 
depths  of  sadness  to  break  into  a  sudden  gaiety 
which  is  most  winning.  Her  wit  is  fine,  quick 
and  light ;  her  memory  is  prodigious ;  she  speaks 
with  eloquence,  but  with  too  much  vehemence 
and  prolixity.  One  can  have  no  conversation 


MANKIND'S  EPITOME  229 

with  her ;  she  does  not  care  to  be  understood,  it 
is  enough  for  her  to  be  listened  to ;  consequently, 
she  has  no  knowledge  whatsoever  of  the  mind, 
the  talents,  the  defects,  and  the  ridicules  of  those 
who  surround  her.  Some  one  has  said  of  her: 
6  qu'elle  n'etait  point  sortie  de  chez  elle,  et  qu'elle 
n'avait  pas  m£me  mis  le  nez  a  la  fenetre.' 

"She  has  spent  her  life  in  seeking  pleasures 
and  amusements  of  all  kinds ;  she  spares  neither 
care  nor  expense  to  make  her  court  agreeable 
and  brilliant.  In  one  word,  Madame  la  Duchesse 
du  Maine  is  so  constituted  that  one  can  say  of 
her  a  great  deal  that  is  good  and  a  great  deal  that 
is  bad,  without  offending  truth.  She  is  haughty 
without  being  proud,  is  a  spendthrift  without 
being  generous,  she  has  religion  but  no  piety,  a 
great  opinion  of  herself  without  contempt  for  others, 
much  information  without  real  knowledge,  and  all 
the  show  of  friendship  without  the  feeling  of  it.  ..." 

What  could  be  the  life  of  those  dependent 
on  Madame  du  Maine,  but  a  meaningless  round 
of  activities  from  which  the  healthy  element  of 
individual  promptings,  the  tonic  flavour  of 
individual  impulses  must  always  and  necessarily 
be  absent !  All  the  weariness  of  it  groans  in 
the  following  passages  : — 

"  We  are  for  ever  saying  and  doing  the  same 
things,  we  walk,  we  remark  on  the  wind,  on 
cards,  on  gains  and  losses,  on  the  measures  taken 
to  keep  the  doors  closed,  whatever  the  heat  may 


230         THE   LATER   COURT   OF  SCEAUX 

be,  arid  on  the  subsequent  despair  of  those  whom 
we  call  the  stifled  ones — among  whom  I  figure." 

Under  such  circumstances  even  the  discomforts 
of  a  transitory  summer  residence — such  as  Sorel1 
from  which  some  letters  are  dated — may  be  greeted 
as  a  godsend,  for  they  create  at  least  a  little  stir 
in  the  torpid  waters,  they  awaken  desire  for  change, 
and  is  it  not  a  pleasure  to  feel  the  stirring  of  a 
desire  ? 

"Sorel  is  good,  inasmuch  as  it  makes  you 
wish  for  Anet,"  writes  Madame  de  Staal,  "and 
so  I  always  come  here  with  great  pleasure. 
This  is  one  of  the  pretty  places  in  this  world, 
nothing  could  be  brighter  or  more  cheerful  than 
its  general  aspect,  but  nothing  could  be  as 
morose  and  cheerless  as  its  inhabitants.  The 
chatelaine  herself  is  reduced  to  wishing  for  some 
annoyance,  some  teasing  element  which  might 
rouse  the  company.  To-night  we  are  going 
to  have  un  grand  souper  maigre  that  won't  be 
more  entertaining  than  the  rest !  In  short,  during 
this  whole  fortnight  since  we  have  been  here, 
nothing  has  happened,  either  tragic  or  comic,  that 
I  could  have  written  to  you.  I  had  thought  of 
reporting  to  you  Monsieur  Dumont's  sore  throat, 
as  the  most  remarkable  event  of  these  days.  He 
wanted  to  be  bled.  Her  Serene  Highness  would 
not  allow  it.  The  tears  of  his  wife,  the  emotion 
of  the  assembly,  the  request  to  call  in  Monsieur 
Bouteille,  refused  peremptorily,  the  manoeuvres 

1  One  of  the  summer  residences  of  Madame  du  Maine. 


WEARY   GLORY 

to  smuggle  in  Monsieur  Andre  instead,  reduced  to 
naught,  the  complaints  on  the  one  hand,  the 
dissertations  on  the  other,  '  tout  cela  s'est 
merveilleusement  etendu  dans  le  vide.'  Now 
Dumont  has  recovered,  in  spite  of  himself,  without 
taking  any  remedy,  and  he  feels  quite  humiliated 
by  it.  ...  Good-bye,  my  queen  ;  if  I  had  anything 
worth  writing,  I  would  sacrifice  my  dinner  to  you, 
but  that  which  comes  into  my  mind  is  more 
tasteless  even  than  what  I  am  going  to  eat.  I 
lose  all  my  thinking  power  when  I  have  no 
time  of  my  own." 

Though  weariness  moans  in  her  heart,  out- 
wardly she  bears  herself  bravely;  graceful  and 
witty,  she  gives  of  the  bountiful  stores  of  her 
mind,  without  expecting  too  much  in  return,  and, 
as  years  go  by,  her  name  is  found  more  and  more 
frequently  coupled  with  that  of  Madame  du 
Deffand,  whenever  the  attractions  of  Sceaux  are 
discussed.  These  two  women,  so  subtly  alike 
in  temperament,  made,  it  is  said,  the  glory  of 
the  second  period  of  Sceaux,  more  than  the 
Duchesse  de  Luynes,  than  the  Marquise  de 
Lambert  in  spite  of  the  fame  of  her  Paris 
salon,  more  than  the  Duchesse  d'Estrees  whose 
inexhaustible  zest  for  activities  was  only  equalled 
by  that  of  Madame  du  Maine  herself. 

This  princess,  in  spite  of  the  prosaic  claims 
of  middle  age  and  embonpoint,  still  looked  upon 
herself  as  an  impersonation  of  Venus  and  Astarte, 


232         THE   LATER   COURT  OF  SCEAUX 

and  claimed  worship  even  from  sceptics  whose 
eyes  failed  to  see  this.  President  Renault  him- 
self, ami  attitre  of  Madame  du  Deffand,  her 
equal  in  terseness  of  speech  and  biting  sarcasm, 
has  to  become  lyrical  like  the  rest — and  how  he 
bewails  it  later  on ! 

"I  spent  more  than  twenty  years  at  Sceaux, 
and  may  God  forgive  me,"  he  exclaims,  "for  all 
the  tasteless  compliments  with  which  I  inflated 
mediocre  verses.  If  by  some  piece  of  ill-luck  these 
wretched  things  were  to  survive  me,  they  would 
lead  people  to  believe  that  the  Duchesse  du  Maine 
was  beauty  personified,  that  she  was  Venus  floating 
upon  the  waters — one  would  mistake  for  physical 
charm  that  which  was  purely  the  charm  of  con- 
versation. Madame  la  Duchesse  du  Maine,"  he 
adds, "  was  the  oracle  of  her  small  court.  It  would 
be  impossible  to  be  more  witty,  more  eloquent, 
more  playful,  more  truly  courteous  than  she  was, 
but,  at  the  same  time,  one  could  not  be  more 
unfair,  more  self-seeking,  or  more  tyrannical." 

All  those  around  her  had  to  humour  her 
caprices,  to  bear  with  her  tyrannies,  to  follow 
her  breathlessly  in  a  senseless  round  of  activities 
which  had  lost  their  taste  even  for  her,  but  which 
had  become  necessities  of  her  life. 

"...  I  am  very  sorry  that  you  should  be  without 
diversions,"  Madame  de  Staal  writes  to  Madame 
du  DefFand,  "  they  are  a  medicine  which  is  indis- 


FEAR   OF  THUNDER  233 

pensible  to  health — our  Princess,  at  least,  has  no 
doubt  of  that,  for  although  she  is  ill,  she  goes  night 
and  day  without  a  pause.  .  .  .  These  last  few 
days  we  were  steeped  in  diversions,  now  we  are 
steeped  in  rain.  .  .  .  Moreover,  our  Princess  has 
lately  caught  a  feverish  chill,  in  spite  of  which 
and  in  defiance  of  the  diabolical  weather  our 
daily  walks  still  continue.  It  would  seem  that 
Providence  fashions  for  the  use  of  princes  special 
bodies  made  to  resist  the  wear  and  tear  of  their 
caprices,  otherwise  they  could  never  reach  a 
man's  estate." 

One  thing  only,  it  seems,  daunted  the  weather- 
proof energy  of  the  Duchesse :  a  thunderstorm  ;  it 
terrified  her,  it  reduced  her  and  her  mental 
capacities  to  their  very  lowest  depth. 

"  I  read  your  letter  to  Her  Serene  Highness  two 
days  ago,  my  queen,"  reports  Madame  de  Staal  to 
her  favourite  correspondent.  "  She  was  in  a  state 
of  great  terror  at  the  thunder,  a  circumstance 
which  did  not  help  your  civilities  to  appear  to 
their  best  advantage.  Another  time  I  shall  take 
care  not  to  expose  you  to  a  thunderstorm ! " 

Indoor  diversions  rivalled  outdoor  pursuits : 
the  stage  at  Sceaux  was  seldom  empty  of  actors, 
and  Madame  du  Maine's  zeal  for  learning  the 
longest  parts  had  not  abated ;  but  it  happened 
sometimes,  in  that  second  period  of  her  reign, 
that  an  overbearing  rival  dared  to  snatch  from 


234          THE  LATER   COURT   OF   SCEAUX 

her  the  sceptre  of  supremacy,  Madame  du 
Chatelet,  for  instance,  who  from  time  to  time 
made  tempestuous  descents  upon  Sceaux  with 
"  her "  Voltaire,  her  scientific  books,  her  manu- 
scripts, and  her  demands  which  set  the  whole 
household  agog.  Madame  de  Staal  writes  to 
Madame  du  Deffand,  who  had  announced  her 
arrival  shortly  after  Madame  du  Chatelet's 
departure. 

"  At  any  rate  the  apartment  reserved  for  you 
here  is  a  comfortable  one;  it  is  that  of  which 
Madame  du  Chatelet  had  taken  possession,  after  a 
discriminate  inspection  of  the  whole  house  !  You 
will  find  in  it,  perhaps,  a  little  less  furniture  than 
she  had  put  in;  for  she  had  plundered  all  the 
apartments  she  had  had  before,  in  order  to  garnish 
this  last  one.  Six  or  seven  tables,  which  had 
been  missing,  were  found  there ;  she  needs  them 
in  all  sizes — very  wide  ones  to  spread  out  her 
papers,  heavy  ones  to  carry  her  travelling  cases, 
light  ones  for  her  knick-knacks,  ribbons,  and 
jewels;  and  yet  this  fine  systematic  arrangement 
did  not  save  her  from  an  accident  such  as  happened 
to  Philip  II.  when,  after  he  had  spent  the  whole 
night  in  writing,  some  one  upset  a  bottle  of 
ink  all  over  his  despatches.  The  lady  did  not 
pride  herself  upon  imitating  the  prince's  modera- 
tion in  this  case — but  then  he  had  only  written 
upon  affairs  of  State,  whereas,  in  her  case,  what 
had  been  smudged  was  algebra,  a  thing  much 
harder  to  clear  up !  ..." 


VOLTAIRE  285 

The  arrival  of  this  female  pedant  is  not  described 
in  enthusiastic  terms. 

"  ANET/  Uth  August  1747- 

" .  .  .  .  Madame  du  Chatelet  and  Voltaire,  who 
were  to  arrive  to-day  and  who  lately  had  been  more 
or  less  lost  sight  of,  appeared  yesterday  about 
midnight,  like  two  ghosts,  carrying  with  them  an 
atmosphere  as  of  embalmed  mummies  who  have 
just  risen  from  their  tombs.  We  had  just  got  up 
from  supper,  however  they  were  famished  ghosts 
and  had  to  have  something  to  eat ;  more  than 
that,  they  had  to  have  beds,  which,  of  course, 
were  not  ready.  The  concierge,  who  had  gone  to 
bed,  got  up  in  great  haste.  Gaya,2  who  had  offered 
to  leave  his  apartment  if  it  should  be  wanted,  was 
obliged  to  give  it  up  now ;  he  moved  out  with  as 
much  precipitation  and  displeasure  as  an  army 
overtaken  in  camp  and  obliged  to  leave  part  of  its 
baggage  in  the  hands  of  the  enemy.  Voltaire  was 
very  comfortable  in  Gaya's  apartment,  a  circum- 
stance which  did  not  comfort  Gaya  in  the  very 
least.  As  to  the  lady  she  declared  that  her  bed 
had  been  made  very  badly,  and  she  had  to  be 
moved  to-day.  You  will  please  note  that  she  had 
made  that  bed  herself ! " 

Madame  du  Chatelet's  recriminations  at  all 
times  were  proverbial.  Madame  de  Staal,  who 
evidently  felt  nothing  but  antipathy  for  a  mind  all 
mathematics  and  a  soul  all  vanity,  writes  a  little 

1  One  of  the  summer  residences  of  Madame  du  Maine. 

2  An  officer  of  Monsieur  du  Maine's  suite. 


236          THE  LATER   COURT   OF  SCEAUX 

later :  "  La  du  Chatelet  has  discovered  a  deviation 
of  16  degrees  by  8  in  her  mattresses  ;  this,  I  should 
think,  has  bruised  her  accurate  mind  more  than  her 
body  which  could  hardly  be  called  delicate." 

On  the  20th  of  August,  five  days  after  Madame 
du  Chatelet 's  arrival,  a  new  letter  of  Madame  de 
Staal  shows  that  the  migrations  of  the  troublesome 
guest  are  not  ended  yet. 

"Madame  du  Chatelet  has  since  yesterday 
completed  her  third  installation ;  she  could  not 
any  longer  bear  the  one  she  had  chosen  before ; 
it  was  noisy,  it  smoked  without  having  any  fire ! 
(smoke  without  fire  seems  to  me  to  be  exactly 
her  emblem).  Noise,  as  she  explained,  does  not 
incommode  her  at  night,  but  in  the  day  time  when 
the  fervour  of  her  work  is  at  its  height,  then  it 
disturbs  her  thoughts.  She  is  at  present  making  a 
review  of  her  '  Principles ' — this  is  a  practice  which 
she  repeats  every  year,  for  fear  they  should  escape 
from  her  and  run  so  far  that  not  one  of  them  could 
be  got  back  again!  I  rather  think  that  her  mind 
is  to  her  principles  more  of  a  prison  than  a  natural 
home ;  there  is  then  every  reason  to  keep  a  careful 
watch  over  them." 

A  very  biting  piece  of  sarcasm — too  biting 
perhaps,  but  it  is  quite  evident  from  the  testimonies 
of  contemporaries  that  Madame  du  Chatelet  never 
enlisted  many  sympathies.  Madame  du  Maine's 
circle  shared  the  common  opinion.  "  They  have  made 
themselves  generally  detested  here,"  Madame  de 


MADAME    DU   CHATELET  237 

Staal  writes  a  few  days  after  the  departure  of 
Voltaire  and  his  Egeria,  "by  showing  neither 
politeness  nor  consideration  to  any  one."  It  seems 
that  these  two  guests  who  were  so  careless  in  the 
matter  of  opportune  arrival,  so  careful  in  the  matter 
of  their  own  comfort,  made  further  breaches  in 
the  etiquette  of  hospitality  by  remaining  all  day 
long  secluded  in  their  apartments. 

"Our  ghosts  do  not  show  themselves  in  the 
daytime,"  we  hear  from  Madame  de  Staal,  "last 
night  they  appeared  at  10  o'clock,  I  don't  think 
that  we  shall  see  them  much  earlier  to-day ;  the 
one  is  busy  describing  valorous  deeds,  the  other  is 
writing  comments  on  Newton — ce  sont  bien  des 
non-valeurs  dans  une  societe  ou  leurs  doctes 
ecrits  ne  sont  d'aucun  rapport." 

To  the  very  end  Madame  du  Chatelet  seems  to 
have  kept  to  her  systematic  selfishness,  though 
Voltaire,  who  evidently  felt  the  criticism  in  the 
air,  made  some  effort  at  propitiation. 

"  She  prefers,"  we  hear,  "  the  charm  of  her  own 
occupations  to  any  amusements  and  she  persists 
in  not  showing  herself  till  nightfall ;  Voltaire,  how- 
ever, has  composed  some  flattering  verses  which  have 
dispelled  just  a  little  the  bad  impression  made  by 
their  unusual  behaviour." 

The  only  occasion  on  which  they  redeemed 
their  reputation  was  on  the  eve  of  their  departure. 


238          THE   LATER  COURT   OF  SCEAUX 

One  of  Voltaire's  comedies,  Le  Comte  de  Boivr- 
soufle,  was  acted,  and  Madame  du  Chatelet,  though 
neither  her  physique  nor  her  costume  were  suited  to 
her  part,  acted  with  such  consummate  excellence 
that  she  won  the  complete  appreciation,  even  of 
Madame  de  Staal.  "  She  acted  with  such  perfec- 
tion the  extravagance  of  her  part  that  it  afforded 
me  the  very  greatest  pleasure."  A  few  notes  of 
criticism,  however,  are  scattered  amongst  the  praises 
of  this  performance,  to  which  many  guests  had  been 
bidden,  and  also  a  well-known  actress,  Madame 
Dufour,  who  was  to  have  the  pleasure  of  acting 
the  secondary  part  of  housekeeper  to  Madame 
du  Chatelet,  in  her  chief  part  of  Mademoiselle  de 
la  Cochonniere. 

"  It  is  Venture 1  who  is  acting  the  Comte  de 
Boursoufle — his  will  not  be  a  speaking  likeness,  nor 
will  this  be  the  case  with  Madame  du  Chatelet 
acting  Mademoiselle  de  la  Cochonniere,  who  ought 
to  be  short  and  fat.  ..." 

And  a  little  later  the  correspondence  records  : — 

"  All  went  off  fairly  well,  and  one  can  say  that 
this  farce  was  well  acted ;  the  author  ennobled  it  by 
a  prologue  in  which  he  acted  himself,  and  very  well, 
too,  with  our  Dufour,  who  but  for  that  glorious 
role  could  not  have  digested  being  Madame  Barbe ; 
she  could  not  consent  to  the  simplicity  of  dress 

1  A  rather  sorry-looking  secretary  of  Monsieur  du  Maine. 


DEPARTURE   OF   VOLTAIRE  239 

required  by  her  role,  neither  could  the  principal 
actress  who,  putting  the  interests  of  vanity  above 
those  of  the  play,  appeared  on  the  stage  in  all  the 
elegance  and  brilliancy  of  a  court  lady ;  she  and 
Voltaire  fell  out  over  this  point,  but  she  is  the 
sovereign  and  he  is  the  slave.  ..." 

Voltaire  and  Madame  du  Chatelet,  by  their  real 
literary  excellence,  and,  perhaps,  who  knows  to 
what  degree,  by  the  decided  independence  of  their 
attitude,  had  set  a  current  of  real  enjoyment  flow- 
ing through  the  dormant  waters  of  Anet ;  and  from 
the  lips  of  Madame  de  Staal,  who  was  ever  ready 
to  be  conquered  by  excellence  of  any  kind,  there 
falls  a  spontaneous  confession  of  dependence  upon 
these  two :  "I  am  very  sorry  that  they  are  going," 
she  owns,  adding  however,  "  but  I  am  wearied  out 
with  her  numerous  and  diverse  caprices,  all  of 
which  she  expects  me  to  fulfil."  The  post  which 
arrived  the  day  after  the  departure  of  these  exact- 
ing guests  can  only  have  strengthened  Madame  de 
Staal  in  her  reservations.  She  describes  this  to 
Madame  du  Deffand  with  her  usual  verve: — 

"The  day  after  their  departure,  I  received  a 
letter  of  four  pages  and  added  to  that,  in  the  same 
packet,  a  note  which  announces  a  great  desarroi, 
Monsieur  de  Voltaire  has  mislaid  his  comedy,  for- 
gotten to  take  with  him  the  actors'  parts  written  out 
separately,  and  lost  the  prologue.  I  am  enjoined 
to  find  everything,  to  send  on  the  prologue  at  the 


240         THE   LATER   COURT   OF   SCEAUX 

very  earliest  opportunity,  not  by  post,  because 
some  one  would  be  sure  to  copy  it.  I  am  to  keep  the 
separate  parts  for  fear  of  the  same  danger  and  to 
lock  up  the  comedy  under  a  hundred  locks  and 
keys !  I  should  have  considered  a  latch  quite 
sufficient  for  the  safe  keeping  of  such  a  treasure ! 
I  have,  however,  duly  executed  all  the  orders  I 
have  received." 

Not  until  Madame  du  Chatelet  brought  him 
in  her  train  had  Voltaire  appeared  at  Sceaux, 
and  yet,  as  a  young  man,  when  he  relied  upon 
his  wit  alone  to  conquer  a  place  in  society,  he 
had  seemed  especially  fitted  to  figure  among  the 
intellectual  purveyors  of  Madame  du  Maine. 
About  1732  again,  Madame  du  DefFand  had 
tried  to  attach  him  in  some  capacity  to  the 
household  of  the  Duchesse,  and  although  the  post 
she  offered  was  not  the  most  desirable,  she  had 
pressed  him  very  much  to  accept  it.  He  had 
refused ;  his  independent  spirit  was  full  grown 
at  that  time  and  chafed  at  the  restraint  which 
was  awaiting  him ;  his  answer,  with  its  little 
venomous  dart  at  the  end,  is  very  characteristic : — 

"  You  have  proposed  to  me,  Madame,"  he  wrote, 
"the  dignity  of  equerry  in  Madame  la  Duchesse 
du  Maine's  household,  and  as  I  did  not  feel 
equal  to  that  task,  I  have  been  obliged  to  wait 
for  another  opportunity  to  pay  my  court  to  you. 
I  hear  that  besides  that  post  of  equerry  there  is 


OPPOSING   EGOISTS  341 

also  another  one  vacant,  for  a  reader;  but  I  am 
quite  convinced  that  this  is  not  a  sinecure  with 
Madame  du  Maine,  as  it  is  with  the  King." 

Voltaire  knew  the  exactions  of  the  service  at 
the  court  of  Sceaux,  and  he  who  at  Madame  de 
Chatelet's  house  was  granted,  as  a  matter  of 
course,  the  undisturbed  enjoyment  of  his  own 
private  apartments,  his  own  gold  plate,  his  own 
moods,  and  his  own  tempers^  had  naturally  been 
unwilling  to  bend  his  neck  under  the  yoke  and 
to  file  into  place  in  the  well-disciplined  ranks  of 
the  Sceaux  courtiers.  Disciplined  they  were 
indeed,  and  from  a  hard  necessity,  meek  of  spirit, 
for  Madame  du  Maine  ignored  other  claims  than 
her  own.  She  expected  the  best  of  all  things 
to  fall  quite  naturally  to  the  best  of  all  beings 
— herself ;  that  division  of  gifts  seemed  to  her  the 
only  possible  one. 


CHAPTER  XX 

THE   CLOSE    OF  AN   EVENTFUL   LIFE 

IF  there  is  one  human  need  which  was  bound  to 
starve  most  cruelly  in  the  atmosphere  of  Sceaux, 
it  is  the  need  of  friendship.  Madame  de  Staal 
longed  for  friendship ;  the  very  frequency  of  the 
letters  written  by  her  to  Madame  du  Deffand 
shows  how  much  she  yearned  for  it.  All  the 
rather  cold  and  sometimes  cynical  philosophy 
which  disillusioning  circumstances  had  built  up 
in  her,  crumbles  down  when  true  devotion  is 
roused.  The  same  absolute  unselfishness  which 
had  once  marked  her  relations  with  the  Marquis 
de  Silly  again  characterises  her  intercourse  with 
Madame  du  Deffand.  Where  she  loves  whole- 
heartedly, she  sacrifices  herself  as  whole-heartedly. 
In  her  solitude  of  mind  and  heart,  her  friend's 
letters  are  the  only  real  joy  of  her  days ;  yet 
she  constantly  puts  a  curb  upon  her  desire  for 
them. 

For  some  reason  still  unknown,  the  letters  of 

the  year  1747  are  the  only  ones  which  have  been 

242 


A  COMFORTING  FRIENDSHIP 

preserved;   at  that  time  the  friendship  between 
the    two    women    is    of   long    date   already,    but 
there  has   been  no   blunting   of  the  keen   sensi- 
bilities.    The  letters  of  Madame  de  Staal  follow 
close  upon   each    other,   often    at    a    distance   of 
two   or  three  days  only,  and  when  the  answers 
do     not     arrive     quickly,    impatience     calls    out 
insistently.     Yet  she  chides  herself  for  this,  and 
she  begs  Madame  du  Deffand  -to  take  no  notice  of 
her  demands.    "  I  beg  you,"  she  writes,  "  to  have  no 
regard  for  my  complaints,  and  to  give  way  to  laziness 
by  all  means,  when  it  overtakes  you ;  I  love  your 
letters  passionately,  but  writing  them   shall  not 
cost  you  anything,"  and  later  on  :  "  Are  you  going 
to   Champs,   ma   reine?     Perhaps  you   are  there 
already.     I   know   nothing   about  you,   but   pro- 
vided you    are  well,   1    approve    of  everything." 
And  another  time :  "  I  will  not  buy  my  pleasure 
at  the  expense    of   your    trouble,   not  even  the 
pleasure  of  hearing  from  you.  ..." 

More  precious  still  than  her  letters  were  the 
visits  which  Madame  du  Deffand  paid  from  time 
to  time  to  the  Duchesse  du  Maine.  These  seem 
to  have  been  scarce  in  that  year  1747,  and  from 
the  cautionary  measures  advised  in  the  letters 
stands  out  quite  clearly  the  fact  which  was 
to  be  expected — that  intercourse  between  the 
independent  minded  Marquise  du  Deffand  and 
the  tyrannical  Duchesse  du  Maine  was  not  a 


244        THE  CLOSE   OF  AN  EVENTFUL  LIFE 

smoothly  working  function.  Though  Madame  de 
Staal  longs  for  the  tonic  presence  of  her  friend, 
her  one  wish  is  to  spare  her  annoyance,  even  if 
it  must  mean  the  giving  up  of  a  visit  long 
planned.  There  is  in  the  letters  a  good  deal 
of  discussion  about  the  comparative  merits  of 
le  grand  chdteau  and  le  petit  chateau ;  these 
were  the  two  residences  of  Madame  du  Maine 
at  Sceaux.  In  the  main  building,  the  grand 
chdteau,  resided  the  Duchesse  herself,  and  there 
she  assigned  apartments  to  those  of  her  guests 
whom  she  wished  to  honour  specially.  Madame 
de  Staal,  as  one  of  the  chief  ladies-in-waiting,  had 
her  rooms  there  too,  and  would  naturally  have 
preferred  to  have  Madame  du  Deffand  under  the 
same  roof,  An  apartment  in  the  grand  chdteau 
would,  as  a  matter  of  course,  have  fallen  to  the 
lot  of  the  influential  Marquise,  but — there  were 
conditions  attached  to  this  honour  which  she  was 
at  times  utterly  incapable  of  fulfilling.  .  .  .  There 
was  something  in  the  atmosphere  of  Sceaux  which 
would  suddenly  plunge  her  into  uncontrollable  fits 
of  boredom ;  on  those  occasions  she  would  unex- 
pectedly be  called  back  to  Paris  on  matters  of  the 
extremest  urgency.  Now  levity  in  the  treatment 
of  the  grand  chdteau  was  the  unpardonable  sin, 
and  the  essence  of  the  crime,  it  will  be  noticed, 
was  not  wilfully  to  forego  the  society  of  Madame 
du  Maine,  but  to  leave  empty  one  of  those  apart- 


MADAME  DU   DEFFAND  245 

ments  which  must  ever  be  filled,  lest  the  tide  of 
popularity  should  be  thought  to  wane ! 

Madame  du  DefFand's  presence  is  desired  at 
Sceaux  for  the  sake  of  her  prestige,  but  her 
temperament  evidently  rouses  hesitations. 

"  I  suspect,"  Madame  de  Staal  writes,  "  that  the 
fear  of  having  fewer  guests  by  giving  you  more 
rooms  is  very  detrimental  to  the  affection  '  a  certain 
person '  has  for  you,  for  '  our '  dominant  passion  is 
the  multitude ;  this  taste  increases  and  grows 
stronger  as  'one'  finds  less  resources  in  'oneself.'  .  .  . 
Whilst  deeming  you  perhaps  less  amiable  than  of 
old,  one  does  not  any  the  less  desire  to  have  you 
here.  The  wish  to  be  surrounded  increases  from 
day  to  day,  and  I  foresee  that  if  you  keep  an 
apartment  without  occupying  it,  it  will  provoke 
great  regret  for  what  will  be  missed  in  con- 
sequence, whatever  it  may  be." 

A  little  later,  as  Madame  du  Deffand  has  not 
yet  given  any  certitude  of  her  arrival  at  Sceaux, 
the  wish  to  have  her  there  increases  in  proportion. 
Madame  de  Staal  has  warmer  messages  to  send, 
but  knowing  her  friend's  impulsive  ways,  she 
advises  the  choice  of  le  petit  chateau,  for  although 
it  was  damp  and  uncomfortable,  to  vacate  an 
apartment  there  unexpectedly  was  counted  a  sin 
of  lesser  proportions. 

"  Madame  la  Duchesse  du  Maine  sends  you 
the  assurances  that  she  loves  you  as  much  as  ever, 


246      THE   CLOSE   OF   AN   EVENTFUL   LIFE 

and  will  give  you  any  apartment  you  may  wish 
to  have,  as  I  have  written  to  you  already.  To 
that  I  add,  between  ourselves,  that  if  while  at  the 
grand  chateau  you  only  appear  in  the  evenings, 
or  if  you  go  to  Paris  frequently,  you  will  encounter 
great  disfavour,  even  if  it  were  only  on  account 
of  the  bad  example  you  will  set,  by  following 
your  own  wishes  in  these  precincts.  .  .  .  Therefore, 
I  advise  you,  ma  reine,  in  spite  of  the  convenience 
it  would  be  to  me,  not  to  accept  that  apartment, 
unless  you  wish  to  accept  with  it  more  responsi- 
bilities than  you  take  in  the  other.  ...  If  you 
cannot  be  here  much,  ma  reine,  try  to  be  satisfied 
with  the  petit  chateau,  in  order  to  avoid  talk 
and  perhaps  complaints  which  would  be  unpleasant 
to  you.  Let  us  strive  to  let  nothing  separate  us 
more  than  we  are  already !  If  you  make  up  your 
mind  to  take  up  your  abode  in  that  cold  and 
damp  place,  give  orders  that  a  good  fire  should 
be  lighted  in  it,  several  days  before  your  arrival." 

Just  before  Madame  du  Deffand  is  to  arrive 
at  Sceaux,  something  happens  which  threatens  to 
break  off  all  relations  between  her  and  Madame 
du  Maine.  She  has  been  to  see  the  Duchesse  de 
Modene,  daughter  of  the  Regent,  a  fascinating 
brilliant  woman  of  whose  rivalry  Madame  du 
Maine  has  always  been  passionately  jealous. 
Such  a  defection  is  unpardonable !  Madame  de 
Staal  warns  her  of  the  effect  of  this  action  and 
beseeches  her  to  bridge  over  difficulties,  if  only 
for  once,  as  she  herself  is  strongly  suspected  of 


MAN'S  INGRATITUDE  247 

admiration  for  the  obnoxious  rival,  and  unless 
Madame  du  Maine's  anger  is  appeased,  it  will 
break  up  everything,  irrespective  of  future  regrets. 

"Nothing,  ma  reine,  could  equal  the  surprise 
and  the  grief  '  a  certain  person '  feels  at  hearing  that 
you  have  been  to  see  Madame  la  Duchesse  de 
Modene ;  the  most  passionate  and  jealous  lover 
would  bear  suspicious  dealings  on  the  part  of  his 
loved  one  with  more  equanimity  than  'one'  endures 
these  from  you." 

And  then  she  quotes  more  or  less  textually 
Madame  du  Maine's  oracular  denunciations  of  the 
world  for  treating  with  such  base  ingratitude  the 
noble  and  unique  gift  of  her  favours. 

"You  go  and  sacrifice  yourself,  you  give  up 
everything  .  .  .  and  this  is  in  reserve  for  you  .  .  . 
one  is  indeed  a  rare  example  of  ill-luck  .  .  .  those 
torments  of  which  one  thought  to  be  delivered 
will  again  befall  one  .  .  .  always  the  same  pitfalls 
...  it  is  a  most  cruel  fate  .  .  .  etc.,  etc. !  .  .  .  I 
said  all  that  could  be  said  to  calm  her,  but  she 
would  listen  to  nothing.  Although  I  ought  not 
to  be  capable  of  surprise  any  more,  this  scene  has 
yet  contrived  to  surprise  me.  Come,  I  beseech 
you,  ma  reine,  come  and  prevent  a  catastrophe  .  .  . 
I  understand  that  you  might  be  tempted  to  avoid 
such  a  thorny  path,  but  remember  that  if  you 
decide  to  do  it,  all  will  fall  upon  me  whom  you 
would  leave  utterly  forsaken.  '  A  certain  person '  is 
already  very  ill-disposed  towards  me,  and  I  entreat 
you,  considering  the  circumstances,  to  lend  yourself 


248      THE   CLOSE   OF  AN  EVENTFUL  LIFE 

to  what  is  necessary  in  order  to  adjust  matters.  If, 
later  on,  you  cannot  stand  it  any  longer  (for  I 
know  how  difficult  it  is)  you  will  loosen  the  ties 
gently,  without  causing  a  definite  rupture;  I 
shall  never  ask  of  your  friendship  that  your  life 
should  be  made  thorny  and  difficult ;  it  is  enough 
that  mine  should  be  so.  If  you  shared  my 
troubles,  far  from  being  relieved  they  would  be 
doubled.  We  are  leaving  here  to-morrow,  and  we 
shall  arrive  at  Sceaux  on  Thursday  ;  as  I  have  told 
you  I  desire  passionately  to  find  you  there  on  our 
arrival.  I  have  never  had  so  great  a  need  of  you, 
my  queen." 

Friendship,  affection  is  for  Madame  de  Staal 
the  great  softener  of  hard  edges ;  under  its 
influence  she  grows  diffident  about  herself,  she 
glows  with  a  desire  for  perfection,  she,  to  whom 
an  exceptionally  clear  vision  has  given  such  self- 
assurance,  a  conviction  that  a  very  moderate  state 
of  grace  is  all  one  can  expect  of  oneself  and  of 
others ! 

"It  would  be  impossible  to  be  more  touched 
by  your  friendship  than  I  am,  ma  reine"  she 
writes,  "but  I  am  a  little  worried  about  the  too 
good  opinion  you  have  of  me ;  it  makes  me  feel 
that  I  may  be  false,  for  if  you  do  not  see  my 
faults,  I  must  be  hiding  them,  and  that  is  worse 
than  possessing  them." 

And  going  back  to  the  same  subject,  another  time : 
"I  see  that  it  is  not  I  whom  you  love,  but 


PATIENCE  AND    WEARINESS  249 

an  ideal  of  your  own  creation,  which  you  have 
made  worthy  of  you,  and  which  has  all  too  little 
resemblance  to  the  frail  creature  to  whom  you 
present  it.  You  will,  in  the  end,  reduce  me  to  my 
own  value :  I  hope,  however,  that  accustomed  to 
love  me  and  touched  by  my  feeling  for  you, 
you  will  not  love  me  any  the  less  for  your 
discovery." 

Her  sincerity  prompts  her  to  give  instances  of 
her  unworthiness,  and  one  of  these  is  so  touching 
in  its  pathetic  grace,  so  illustrative  at  the  same 
time  of  the  atmosphere  of  Sceaux,  that  it  is  worth 
being  quoted  in  full.  Madame  du  Maine  was 
suffering  from  an  attack  of  rheumatism  to  which  she 
sacrificed  many  of  her  attendants,  but  none  of  her 
diversions.  Two  nights  running  Madame  de  Staal 
had  been  called  to  keep  the  wakeful  Duchesse 
company,  and  her  weariness  was  so  great  that 
for  a  moment  she  so  far  forgot  herself  that  she 
dared  to  show  it.  She  bemoans  the  fact  to 
Madame  du  Deffand. 

"  I  am  far  from  being  as  perfect  as  you  think 
me.  When  I  was  fetched  the  second  night,  I 
made  a  wry  face,  being  really  hardly  able  to  drag 
myself.  The  next  day  I  was  reprimanded  for  it, 
very  curtly,  and  in  the  presence  of  many;  that 
displeased  me.  I  had  begged  Monsieur  de  Lassay, 
who  was  there  at  the  time,  to  lodge  for  me  a 
modest  little  complaint ;  he  missed  his  opportunity, 
and  I  don't  think  he  has  found  one  since.  Don't 


250      THE  CLOSE   OF  AN  EVENTFUL  LIFE 

mention  this  to  him,  if  you  see  him,  for  now  it 
would  not  be  of  use  any  more."  Then  she  adds 
philosophically  :  "  The  result  of  all  this  has  been 
that  I  have  been  left  to  myself  a  good  deal,  and 
perhaps  that  a  little  contempt,  provided  I  do  not 
deserve  it,  is  better  than  a  great  deal  of  fatigue 
which  I  might  have  had.  .  .  .  ' 

Next  to  Madame  de  StaaFs  admirable  capacity 
of  devotion  to  real  friends  stands  her  no  less 
admirable  quality  of  indifference  to  all  friendship 
not  based  on  congeniality  of  mind  and  feeling. 
The  importance  in  her  eyes  of  those  friends 
who  can  only  be  made  by  "climbing"  and  used 
for  "  climbing "  she  expresses  in  her  own  ironical 
manner.  "  As  to  those  (friends)  who  can  only  be 
caught  by  aerial  flights,  one  will  do  well  to  feel 
resigned  when  one  misses  them,  and  not  to  spoil 
one's  features  for  their  sake."  All  through  the 
long  years  which  she  spent  with  Madame  du 
Maine,  she  never  used  that  rare  perspicacity 
which  was  hers,  that  quick  amusing  wit  on  which 
the  Duchesse  had  learned  to  depend,  for  any 
purpose  of  self-advancement ;  she  never  presumed 
on  any  appreciation  shown  to  her  qualities  to 
make  claims  to  any  friendship.  She  had  realised 
that  Madame  du  Maine  had  none  of  the  qualities 
which  make  a  real  friend,  and  she  scorned  a 
semblance  of  it.  Yet,  even  while  she  thought 
herself  resigned  to  the  callous  atmosphere  around 


DEATH   OF  THE   DUCHESSE   D'ESTREES    251 

her,  something  happened  in  that  same  year  1747, 
just  as  the  first  autumn  leaves  were  falling  from 
the  trees  in  the  beautiful  park  of  Anet — something 
happened  which  made  her  realise  with  an  ugly 
shock  that  she  had  yet  been  dreaming  dreams 
about  humanity,  and  that  reality  was  more 
hopeless,  by  far,  than  she  had  thought.  The 
Duchesse  d'Estrees,  closest  friend  of  Madame  du 
Maine,  and  the  very  embodiment  of  vitality, 
died  suddenly,  and  Anet,  shaken  to  its  very 
foundations  by  this  overpowering  victory  of  Death, 
showed  only  one  feeling  after  a  few  brief  hours 
of  stupor,  a  passionate  wish  to  forget. 

This  event  is  the  last  she  has  recorded  ;  a  few 
passages  in  letters  addressed  to  Madame  du  Deffand 
call  up  the  melancholy  episode.  The  first  allusion 
to  it  is  written  in  that  slight  note  of  mocking 
cynicism  which  Madame  de  Staal  so  frequently 
sounds ;  she  does  not  foresee  any  serious  conse- 
quences of  the  incident  she  relates,  and  her  style 
follows  its  natural  bent : 

"Yesterday,  the  Duchesse  d'Estrees  had  a 
heavy  fall — being  quite  incapable  of  having  a 
light  one ;  she  declares  that  her  head  in  striking 
the  stairs  made  a  noise  like  thunder,  and  she  says 
that  she  rolled  down  five  steps.  She  had  herself 
bled,  and  went  down  to  supper ;  I  suppose  that  she 
supped  well,  and  that  this  accident  will  have  no 
unpleasant  consequences." 


252      THE   CLOSE   OF  AN  EVENTFUL  LIFE 

The  first  consequence  was  an  unexpected  one. 
The  Duchesse,  deplorably  headstrong  as  a  rule,  in 
a  way  which  often  caused  her  to  fall  from  grace, 
went  through  a  felicitous  period  of  meekness  and 
self-abasement  which  made  Madame  de  Staal 
exclaim:  "I  have  never  seen  her  more  easily  satisfied 
or  more  accommodating,  her  rivals  are  getting 
thin  writh  disappointment  over  this  happy  truce ! " 

There  was  no  need  to  fear  Madame  d'Estrees' 
ever-renewed  influence  over  Madame  du  Maine 
— it  was  doomed  even  then ;  a  few  days  later  she 
died  suddenly,  perhaps  from  the  consequences  of 
her  accident. 

"  This  afternoon  we  are  burying  that  poor 
Duchesse  d'Estrees,"  writes  Madame  de  Staal, 
"  and  then  the  curtain  will  come  down,  and  we 
will  say  no  more  about  it.  ...  We  have  not  had 
any  acting,  it  is  true,  since  the  awful  spectacle 
which  we  have  had  to  witness,  but  I  should  not 
wonder  if  we  saw  Monsieur  de  Senetterre's  farce 
acted  here  again,  before  we  leave.  ...  It  must 
be  owned  that  this  is  going  a  little  beyond  human 
nature.  I  can  imagine  my  own  funeral,  if  regrets 
for  me  are  greater,  my  funeral  pomp  will  be 
greater  in  proportion  .  .  .  but  what  does  it  all 
matter ! " 

What  does  it  all  matter  —  this  becomes 
more  and  more  the  keynote  of  Madame  de  Staal's 
philosophy.  The  vanity  of  things  —  how  could 
it  have  been  illustrated  more  poignantly  than  by 


SPREADING   OF  THE   MIGHTY  ONES      253 

Madame  du  Maine's  desperate  wooing  of  pleasure 
— pleasure  at  any  cost,  at  any  price,  as  a  mere 
assertion  of  her  caprices,  perhaps  as  a  flimsy 
curtain  screening  but  imperfectly  the  unfaceable 
terrors  of  old  age  and  death.  .  .  .  For  one  who 
looked  on  with  seeing  eyes  at  the  fantasmagory 
of  Sceaux,  there  were  many  curious  truths  to  be 
discovered ;  Madame  du  Deffand  confesses  that 
she,  too,  found  in  it  rare  good  fortunes  of  observa- 
tion. Madame  de  Staal  and  she  had,  from  daily 
experiences,  come  very  much  to  the  same  con- 
clusions. One  of  those  facts  which  had  been 
most  ruthless  in  the  shaping  of  her  life  at  Sceaux 
is  expressed  by  Madame  de  Staal  with  a  note  of 
triumphant  superiority  although  bitterness  rankles 
in  it  still. 

"From  sheer  spreading  of  their  personality," 
she  writes,  "  the  mighty  ones  of  this  earth  become 
so  transparent  that  one  can  see  through  them ;  it 
is  a  sight  which  affords  fine  opportunities  for  study, 
and  I  know  of  nothing  which  inclines  me  more 
to  philosophy." 

She  understands  that  as  "  the  mighty  ones " 
feel  this  irrepressible  need  of  "  spreading,"  there 
can  be  but  little  room  left  for  those  dependent 
on  them,  and  that  the  only  wise  course  to  take  is 
to  school  oneself  to  indifference.  "  Sensitiveness," 
she  says,  "  increases  as  one  panders  to  it ;  one  is 


254      THE  CLOSE   OF  AN  EVENTFUL  LIFE 

often  unhappy  only  from  too  great  a  wish  to  be 
happy." 

Thus  she  expresses  her  renunciation  which,  for 
all  its  philosophy,  still  pulses  with  the  eternal 
yearning  of  the  human  heart.  How  much  was 
life  to  grant  yet  to  her  longings  ?  Only  three 
short  years  were  left  to  her  as  she  wrote  the 
words  last  quoted,  and  of  these  last  years  nothing 
is  known.  The  letters  written  after  1747  seem 
to  have  been  lost,  probably  there  were  but  few  of 
them :  the  strenuous  personality  which  had  mocked 
at  fate  so  long,  which  had  hoped  so  buoyantly 
and  had  grieved  so  passionately,  was  dying  out 
at  last  in  the  cold  shadow  which  "  the  great  ones 
of  this  earth  "  spread  around  them.  Perhaps  she 
found  increasing  peace  and  serenity ;  had  she 
been  asked  to  sum  up  these  years  of  her  life,  she 
might  perhaps  have  repeated  those  words  which 
close  one  of  her  last  letters  and  which  seem  to 
sound  a  defeat  and  yet  a  victory  :  "  Since  I  have 
come  to  wish  for  nothing,  I  have  felt  more  at 
peace  than  if  I  had  everything  that  I  ever  wished 
to  possess." 


INDEX 


ALBEMARLB,  Duchess  of,  56 

Alberoni,  Cardinal,  145-146 

Anjou,  Duchesse  d',  69 

Argenson,  Marquis  d',  61,  62,  130,  163- 

Artagnan,  Comtesse  d',  56 
Austria,  Emperor  of,  92 

BARRON,  58 

Berry,  Due  de,  97-98 

,  Duchesse  de,  156-157 

Bethune,  Due  de,  149 

Blois,  Mademoiselle  de,  see  Duchesse 

d 'Orleans 
Bourbon,  Henri- Jules  de,    "  Monsieur 

le  Prince,"  40,  49,  56,  94 
,  "Monsieur  le  Due,"  48,  117-118, 

151,  199,  202 

Bourgogne,  Duchesse  de,  95,  97 
Brassac,  Comtesse  de,  77 
Bretagne,  Due  de,  34,  96 
Brigaut,  Abbe",  141-145 

CELLAMARE,  Prince,  126-128,  142 
Charolais,  Comte  de,  118 
Chatelet,  Marquise  du,  234-241 
Chaulieu,  Abbe  de,  113-116 
Choiseul,  Duchesse  de,  56 
Clermont,  Mademoiselle  de,  63 
Coislin,  Due  de,  56 
Colbert,  52 

Cond£,  "le  Grand, "40 
Conti,  Prince  de,  118-201 

DAUPHIN,  the,  92 

Dauphine,  the,  29 

Delaunay,  Henriette,  36,  65 

,  Mademoiselle,  birth  and  educa- 
tion, 1  -  5  ;  is  considered  a  prodigy, 
6  ;  first  glimpse  of  the  world,  7-9  ; 
falls  in  love,  10-20;  is  thrown 
upon  her  own  resources,  22 ;  seeks 
her  fortune  in  Paris,  27 ;  meets 
Madame  de  la  Ferte,  28  ;  is  shown 
to  society  at  Versailles,  34  ;  is  taken 
to  Sceaux,  57  ;  enters  Madame  du 
Maine's  service,  65  ;  discomforts  of 
her  position,  67-74  ;  resolves  to  put 
an  end  to  her  life,  75  ;  comes  into 
notice,  79  ;  acts,  84 ;  her  portrait, 
113 ;  legal  researches,  120 ;  inter- 


views with  adventurers,  121  - 124  ; 
meetings  with  conspirators,  137 ; 
arrested,  149-153  ;  diversions  at  the 
Bastille,  159-161;  elusiveness,  167- 
J68 ;  falls  in  love  with  De  Menil, 
169-186  ;  the  Cellamare  conspiracy, 
196;  returns  to  Sceaux,  204-208; 
overtures  of  marriage,  211-215 ;  meets 
Monsieur  de  Staal,  219-221;  corre- 
spondence, 226-254 

Descartes,  4 

Dubois,  Abbe",  then  Cardinal,  129-155, 
164,  197 

Duclos,  98,  131 

"  EMINENCE  grise,"  22 

Enghien,  Duchesse  d',  56 

Estre6s,  Duchesse  d',  206,  231,  251-252 

Eu,  Comte  d',  118 

F^NELON,  43 

Ferte,  Duchesse  de  la,  27-38,  39,  53, 
58-66,  212-213 

,  Marechal  de  la,  38 

Fillon,  Mademoiselle,  139 
Fleury,  Cardinal,  201-203 
Fontenelle,  6,  62,  78,  79,  88 

GENEST,  Abbe,  57 
George  I.  of  England,  129 
Gobelin,  Abb6,  46 
Grieu,  Madame  de,  4-7,  21 
Guise,  Princesse  de,  71 

HARCOURT,  Comte  d',  56 
Renault,  President,  57,  232 
Hombert,  96 

INFANTA,  Marie- Victoire  of  Spain,  198, 

LA  CHAISE,  Pere,  22 

Lambert,  Marquise  de,  147,  231 

Laval,  Comte  de,  126, 137, 162, 165,  207 

Law,  197-198 

Lendtre,  52 

Le  Tellier,  Pere,  93-94 

Luynes,  Duchesse  de,  200,  231 

"MADAME,"  the  Regent's  mother,  151- 
152,  188-189, 191 


255 


256 


INDEX 


Maillard,  Frere,  22 

Maine,  Due  du,  character  and  appear- 
ance, 45 ;  Madame  de  Maintenon's 
devotion,  46-47  ;  marriage,  48-49  ; 
excluded  at  Sceaux,  89-90  ;  declared 
Ugitim6,  100-101;  appalled  at  the 
conditions  of  the  King's  will,  108  ; 
deprived  of  his  power,  111  ;  opposes 
an  alliance  with  England,  129 ;  ex- 
cluded from  the  Duchesse's  intrigues, 
119-148 ;  dares  not  to  be  present  at 
the  Kng's  first  lit  de  justice,  132; 
deprived  of  his  privileges,  134 ;  ar- 
rested, 150  ;  attitude  in  prison,  119  ; 
plans  a  separation  from  the  Duchesse, 
191-192  ;  yields  to  her  remonstrances, 
193-194  ;  dilatory  ways,  219  ;  grants 
Madame  de  Staal-Delaunay  a  pension, 
221 

,  Duchesse  du,  family  and  racial 

traits,  40-44 :  marries  the  Due  du 
Maine,  47-49 ;  determines  to  shun 
Versailles,  51 ;  founds  her  rival 
court,  52 ;  her  courtiers  and  diver- 
sions, 76,  81-88;  aspires  at  the 
Regency  for  the  Due,  89  ;  efforts  to 
know  the  terms  of  the  King's  will, 
102  - 105 ;  recriminations  at  the 
decrees  of,Parliament,  111-112  ;  takes 
part  in  the  quarrel  between  the 
princes,  119  ;  accepts  the  services  of 
adventurers,  123 ;  despair  over  the 
defeat  of  her  party,  124 ;  plots 
against  the  Regent,  125-144;  ar- 
rested and  sent  to  Dijon,  151 ;  moans 
over  her  captivity,  188-189 ;  writes 
a  confession,  190 ;  released,  190 ; 
returns  to  Sceaux,  193-195  ;  reorgan- 
ises her  court,  207-208  ;  her  portrait, 
227  ;  her  tyrannies,  241-248 

Maintenon,  Marquise  de,  43,  46,  47, 
49,  95-97,  107 

Maisonrouge,  Monsieur  de,  170-186, 
205,  211 

Malezieu,  Monsieur  de,  54,  56-66,  189 

Meml,  Chevalier  de,  141-145,  170-186, 
205 

Mesmes,  President  de,  104,  130 

Modene,  Duchesse  de,  246-247 


Montauban,  Mademoiselle  de,  150,  170 
Montespan,  Madame  de,  44,  45 

NANTES,  Mademoiselle  de,  44,  48 
Nevers,  Due  de,  56,  57 
Noailles,  Duchesse  de,  35 

,  Marquis  de,  130,  200 

Novion,  Comte  de,  26 

ORLEANS,  Due  d',  the  Regent,  44,  47, 
90,   96,  105-107,   111,   117-119,   129- 

151,  154-158 

,  Duchesse  d',  45,  118 

PHILIP  V.  of  Spain,  104-125,  154-155, 

202 
Polignac,  Cardinal  de,  81, 119, 127-128, 

152,  194-195 

Pompadour,  Marquis  de,  126-128,  162, 

165,  207 

Portocarrero,  Abbe"  de,  138-140 
Prie,  Marquise  de,  44 
Puget,  52 

RICHELIEU,  Cardinal  de,  22 

,  Due  de,  162,  165,  180-182 

Rochefoucauld,  Due  de  la,  2,  200 

,  Madame  de  la,  2-7 

Rohan,  Cardinal  de,  28,  29,  36,  61 

SABRAN,  Madame  de,  140 

Saint-Aulaire,  87 

Saint-Simon,  Due  de.  49,  92.  101.  133- 

134,  140 
Silly,  Marquis  de,  10-20,  23,  72,  74,  80 

,  Marquise  de,  13-16 

Staal,  Monsieur  de,  217-222 
Stair,  Lord,  129 

TOULOUSE,  Comte  de,  101,  104,  135 

URSINS,  Princesse  des,  97 
Uzes,  Comtesse  d',  77 

VATEL,  42 

Ventadour,  Duchesse  de,  2,  28,  31,  61 

Vertot,  Abbe"  de,  6 

Villeroi,  Mare-cha!  de,  130 

Voltaire,  234-241 


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